Individual Decisions Quarter

Individual Decisions Quarter (hereinafter, the Quarter) is a lecture introducing the learners to individuals designs primarily through key topics related to individual decision-making. The Quarter is the third of four lectures of Individuals Quadrivium, which is the fourth of seven modules of Septem Artes Administrativi (hereinafter, the Course). The Course is designed to introduce the learners to general concepts in business administration, management, and organizational behavior.

Outline

Human Motivations Quarter is the predecessor lecture. In the enterprise envisioning series, the previous lecture is Effort Engineering Quarter.

Concepts

1. Decision. A choice made from among two or more alternatives.
   • Programmed decision. Any decision to follow a policy, operative rule, another regulation, or to routinely repeat one's previous decision that has been made while handling a similarly structured task.
   • Non-programmed decision (creative decision). A unique and nonrecurring decision that requires a custom-made solution.
2. Decision-making. The action or process of making non-programmed decisions; creative behavior resulted in a new decision.
   • Individual decision-making. Decision-making made by an individual as opposed to group decision-making.
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     Decision-making approach
     Decision-making approach. A particular manner of taking preliminary steps toward making a decision.
3. Intuitive decision-making. Unconscious decision-making on the basis of distilled experience, feelings, and accumulated judgment.
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     Intuition
     Intuition. An instinctive feeling not necessarily supported by research.
4. Rational decision-making. Decision-making that produces choices that are logical and consistent and maximize value.
   • Rationale. A reasoning characterized by making consistent, value-maximizing choices within specified constraints.
5. Decision criteria. Criteria that define what's important or relevant to resolving a problem.
   • Quantitative approach in management. The use of quantitative techniques to improve decision-making.
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     Decisional discretion
     Decisional discretion. The freedom to decide what should be done in a particular situation.
6. 

   Structured-task competence
   Structured-task competence. A model that describes psychological states involved in the process of progressing from incompetence to analytical competence and, further, to intuitive competence in some knowledge, skill, and/or ability.
   • Unconscious incompetence (or wrong intuition). A situation in which the individual neither understands nor knows how to accomplish a job task and does not necessarily recognize the deficit.
   • Conscious incompetence (or wrong analysis). A situation in which the individual neither understands or knows how to accomplish a job task, but he or she recognizes the deficit. He or she also realizes the value of new knowledge, skill, and/or ability needed in addressing the deficit. The making of mistakes can be integral to the learning process at this level of competence.
   • Conscious competence (or right analysis). A situation in which the individual understands and/or knows how to accomplish a job task. However, demonstrating the knowledge, skill, and/or ability requires concentration. It may be broken down into steps, and there is heavy conscious involvement in executing the needed knowledge, skill, and/or ability.
   • Unconscious competence (or right intuition). A situation in which the individual not only understands and knows how to accomplish a job task, but has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can sometimes be performed while executing another job task. The individual may be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.
7. Behavior. The way in which someone, something, or their group functions, operates, and/or conducts oneself.
   • Intention. A decision to act in a given way.
   • Behaviorism. A theory that argues that behavior follows stimuli in a relatively unthinking manner.
   • Creative behavior. The way in which someone, something, or their group makes non-programmed decisions and acts on them.
8. 

   Attitude
   Attitude. An evaluative statement or judgment, either favorable or unfavorable, concerning objects, people, or events.
   • Cognitive attitude. That part of an attitude that's made up of the beliefs, opinions, knowledge, or information held by a person. In other words, the cognitive component is the opinion or belief segment of an attitude.
   • Affective attitude. The emotional or feeling segment of an attitude.
   • Behavioral attitude. The segment of an attitude that refers to an intention to behave in a certain way toward someone or something.
9. Situational control. The capacity of a decision maker to manage the situation and estimate the likelihood of certain outcomes.
   • Certainty. A situation in which a decision maker can make accurate decisions because all the data and outcomes are known.
   • Uncertainty. A situation in which a decision maker has neither certainty nor reasonable probability estimates available.
10. Ad hoc decision-making.
    • Design thinking. Approaching management problems as designers approach design problems.
    • Heuristic. A rule of thumb that decision makers use to simplify decision-making.
11. Core self-evaluation. Bottom-line conclusions individuals have about their capacities, competence, and worth as a person. In other words, self-believing in one's inner worth and basic competence.
    • General mental ability. An overall factor of intelligence, as suggested by the positive correlations among specific intellectual ability dimensions.
12. Decisional tendency.
    • Bounded rationality. Decision-making that is rational, but limited (bounded) by an individual's ability to process information. In other words, bounded rationality is a process of making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity.
    • Escalation of commitment. An increased commitment to a previous decision despite evidence it may have been wrong.
    • Risk aversion. The tendency to prefer a sure gain of a moderate amount over a riskier outcome, even if the riskier outcome might have a higher expected payoff.
13. Decision-making dilemma. Optimizing vs. satisficing, intuitive vs rational vs ad hoc, Agile vs rigid, conservative vs aggressive, linear vs nonlinear
    • Satisfice. Acceptance of solutions that are "good enough."
    • Allostasis. Working to change behavior and attitude to find stability.
14. Self-regulation strategy.
    • Prevention focus. A self-regulation strategy that involves striving for goals by fulfilling duties and obligations.
    • Promotion focus. A self-regulation strategy that involves striving for goals through advancement and accomplishment.
15. 

    Ethical dilemma
    Ethical dilemma. A situation in which individuals are required to define right and wrong conduct.
    • Ethics. Principles, values, and beliefs that define what is right and wrong behavior.
    • Behavioral ethics. Analyzing how people actually behave when confronted with ethical dilemmas.
16. Cognitive dissonance. Any incompatibility or inconsistency between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes.

Roles

1. Decision maker.
2. Operations research analyst. A professional who formulates and applies mathematical modeling and other optimizing methods to develop and interpret information that assists management with decision-making, policy formulation, or other managerial functions. He or she may collect and analyze data and develop decision support software, service, or products, as well as develop and supply optimal time, cost, or logistics networks for program evaluation, review, or implementation.

Methods

1. Decision table. A decision-making technique that specifies complex business rules or logic concisely in an easy-to-read tabular format, specifying all of the possible conditions and actions that need to be accounted for in business rules.
2. Decision tree. A decision-making technique that provides a graphical alternative to decision tables by illustrating conditions and actions in sequence. In other words, the decision tree is a diagram that describes a decision under consideration and the implications of choosing one or another of the available alternatives. It incorporates probabilities or risks and the costs or rewards of each logical path of events and future decisions.

Instruments

1. Rational decision-making model. A decision-making model that describes how individuals may rationally behave in order to maximize the outcomes from the decision.

   DREPD	GOFER	DECIDE	Seven-step decision-making
   Discover	Goals clarification.	Define the problem.	Outline your goal and outcome.
   		Establish all the criteria (constraints).	Gather data.
   	Options generation.	Consider all the alternatives.	Develop alternatives.
   	Facts-finding.
   Research	Consideration of Effects		List pros and cons of each alternative.
   Envision	Review and implementation.	Identify the best alternative.	Make the decision.
   Plan		Develop and implement a plan of action	Immediately take action to implement it.
   Discover (in a new cycle)		Evaluate and monitor the solution and examine feedback when necessary	Learn from and reflect on the decision.

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     Seven-step decision-making
     Seven-step decision-making. A rational decision-making model that consists of seven steps.

Practices

Talent Management Quarter is the successor lecture. In the enterprise envisioning series, the next lecture is User Experience Quarter.