Judgment and Decision Making

JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING Name: Grade Course: Tutor’s Name August 11, 2010 TOPIC NO 1-READING 8.1: Linstone, H. (1984), Chapter 4, ‘Our Proposed Perspectives. In a socio technical system, problems and issues are dealt with not only through the technological aspect but on a social one as well. The socio technical systems can be viewed in multi perspectives, technical perspective (T), organizational perspective (O), and at a personal perspective (P). Though they can be viewed independently, the other perspectives add some valuable insights to create a balance. The technical perspective involves figurative analysis, probabilities, quantitative terms and information categorization. In the organizational perspective a policy is analyzed by questioning how the policy will affect the organizations place or stability. Rules and regulations are followed. All solutions can be found in the procedural manual. The organizational culture is important as it reflects the organization’s values. The O perspective is crucial in each group as it helps the group in making decisions. The O perspective maybe indistinct and requires more than in-depth understanding to be brought to light. In O perspective, short change actions are prioritized rather than long term changes. The staffs are afraid of making errors, a characteristic which is criticized in this era of changing society where flexibility is a requisite to changing technology. The personal perspective views the world from an individual’s point of view. A modern executive will need to make decisions that at times may go against his personal believes. The individual’s personality, intuition, leadership and self interests are recognized. Effective organizations have been organized in such a way that the individuals self interests are used to align with the goals of the organization. The P perspective is dominant in politics. Understanding the P perspectives can help in understanding the O perspective as the personal perspective can be used to create an organizational culture. Integrating the perspectives is crucial in the modern world. Individuals and organizations will need to keep changing the perspectives. The P perspective can be changed to be the organizations perspective especially where the executive is a dominant individual among those who make a difference. New technology requires major T perspective. The executive will apply his own plus the office staff P perspective and the department’s O perspective as he takes advice technical advice from the operations managers T perspective. Personal Experience I was involved in the implementation of an enterprise resource system (ERP) in the office where I worked. There was a disagreement between the IT staff and the other staff who were going to be the program users. The IT staff had a strong view that the implementation period was impractical, that for it to be fully implemented it required at least a six months trial period. The rest of the staff members were in a rush to have the system running as there were deadlines on the closing of the organizations financial period and waiting for six months was going to interfere with invoicing customers. Late invoicing would mean reduced collections. This would reflect a reduction in sales which might be viewed negatively by the shareholders and the third parties. The Project manager had to apply his strong personality ant use the P perspective, listen to both the technical sides T perspective and the rest of the staffs’ O perspective. TOPIC NO 2-READING 3.2: Parkin, J.V. (1996a), Chater 4, ‘Design Choice using Social Impact : A Transmission Tower Example ’, Avebury Aldershot, UK. A committee representing the public was involved in the selection of the visual characteristics in a proposal that was to combine the selection of the design of the tower with EIS process. The committee was to use Judgment Analysis to objectify and merge policies by first identifying four important attributes that would affect the judgment of the committee, scale these attributes, present 20 scenarios for judgment using selected criteria and back calculating by regression analysis the weight placed on the four attributes. The procedure was in two steps, the social policies and the technical judgment which were integrated later. Four prominent factors that would affect the choice of the tower were identified, the cost, the architects opinion, the publics opinion, and the possibility of interruption in the erecting process. Policy capturing was done using judgment analysis where four people were to be tested among whom two were non residents. The instructions were explained and understood by all the four participants. The sorting and marking of cards was done. The questions were formulated and the definitions of the questions were included. The cards judgments were then evaluated by applying multiple regression statistics. In technical judgments step, towers were designed. The tower structure costs were estimated. Before the survey was sent to the public, the architect marked his own designs. The power interruption likelihood test proved that there was no likelihood of power reduction during the construction. A public survey was done by a market research firm on the preferred design and the reasons for that preference. The integrated judgment was as follows; the results were coded and arranged according to the preferred towers. Each tower was bootstrapped to each of the officials. S1, S2, S3, S4 by feeding the values back into the four regression equations and a judgment score was calculated. The Judgment analysis in this case was applied in the procedure of organizing the tower selection in such a way that the feasible visual effect could be integrated into the social judgment of selection committee. Personal Experience I was involved in a marketing research firm where an entrepreneur was doing a feasibility study on whether to start a specialized kindergarten for the after school hours. The research was interested in finding out on where working parents wanted to live their young children between the working hours, and the hours that working parents got back from home. There were several alternatives, that they remained at school, that they went home where they would find nannies at home or refer them to kindergartens specialized for after the school hours. The children experts preferred trained nannies while the parents were divided between the special kindergartens and staying back at school. The judgment analysis method was used to analyze the preferred method. TOPIC NO 3-READING 4.1 “A reappraisal of probabilistic risk analysis” by John Whittaker In the article titled “A reappraisal of probabilistic risk analysis” by John Whittaker the writer takes the reader through the various processes that are involved in decision making when encountered by a problem. The writer of this article has clearly indicated that the most appropriate way of addressing a problem that encounters the public is through the use of the probabilistic risk to determine the risk that a particular action or activity has on the public, this not only provides the public with the knowledge of the outcome but it acts as a threat mechanism to them. As implemented by the use of the fault tree, the writer in the article is seen criticizing this form of problem evaluation or decision making procedure as he states that it’s an assumption that tends to mislead the resulting idea. The writer has criticized the Fault tree by stating that it is not the most appropriate determinant of the future success or failure of a project ...