The Executive as Decision Maker

Decision maker

Managing Decision Maker

What part does decision taking play in managing? I shall find it convenient to make mild liberties with the english language by using " decision making " as though it were synonymous with " managing". What is our mental image for the decision maker? is he a brooding man on horseback who suddenly rouses himself thought and issues an order to a subordinate? is he a happy-go-lucky fellow, a coin poised on his thumbnail, ready to risk his action on the toss? is he an alert, gray-haired businessman, sitting at the board of directors table with his associates,caught at the moment of saying "aye" of  "nay" ? is he a bespectacled gentleman, bent over a docket of papers, his pen hovering over the line marked (X) ?

All of these image have a significant point in common. In them the decision maker is a man at the moment of choice, ready to plant his foot on one or another of the routes that lead from the crossroads. All the images falsify decision by focusing on its final moment. all of them ignore the whole lengthy, complex process of alerting, exploring, and analysing that precede that final events.

INTELEGENCE, DESIGN, AND CHOICE IN DECISION MAKING

In treating decision making as synonymous with managing. I shall be referring not merely to the final act of choice among alternatives, but rather to the whole process of decision. Decision making komprises three principal phases : finding accasions for making a decision; finding possible courses af action; and choosing among courses of action. These three activities account for quite different fractions of the time budgets of executives. 

The fraction vary greatly from one organization level to another and from one executive to another, but we can make some generalizations about then even casual, observation, executives spend a large fraction of their time surveying the economic, technical, political, and social environment to identify new conditions that call for new actions. They problably spend an even larger fraction of their time individually or with their associates, seeking to ivent, design and develop possible courses of action for handling situations where a decision is needed. They spend a small fraction of their time in choosing among alternative actions already developed to meet an identified problem and already analysed their consequences. The three Fractions, added together, account for most of what executive do.

The first phase of the decision making process-searching the environment for conditions calling for decision I shall call intelligence activity (borrowing the military meaning of intelligence). The second phase-inventing, developing, and analysing  possible courses of action I shall call design activity. The third phase-selecting a particular course of action from those available-I shall call choice activity.

Let me illustrate these three phase of decision. in the past five years, many companies have reorganized their accounting and other data processing activities in order to make use of large electronic computers. How has this come about?  Computers first became available commercially in the early 1950s. Although, in some vague and general sense, company managements had investigated their possible applicotions with any thoroughness before about 1955. For most companies, the use of computers required no decision before that time because it hadn't been placed on the agenda.

The intelligence activity proceding the introduction of computers tended to come about in one of two ways. some companies-for example, in the aircraft and atomatic energy industries-were burdened with enormously complex computations for engineering design. Because the design departments were staffed with engineers who could understand, at least in general, the technology of computers, awareness of computers and their potentialities came early to these companies. After computers were already in extensive use for design calculations, businesses with a large number-processing load-insurance companies, accounting departments in large firms, banks-discovered these new devices and began to consider seriously their introduction.

once it was recognized that computers might have a place in modern business, a major design task had to be carried out in each company before they could be introduced. It is now a common place that payrolls can prepared by computers. progams in both the general and computer sense for doing this are relatively easy to design in any given situation. To develop the first computer programs for preparing payroll, however, was a major research  and development project. Few companies having carried their investigations of computers to the point where they had definite plants for their use, failed to install them. Commitment to the new course of action took place gradually as the intelligence and design phases of the decision where going on. The final choice was, in many instances, almost pro-forma.

Generally speaking, intelligence activity precedes design activity precedes choice. The cycle of phases is, however, far more complex than this sequence suggests. Each phase in making a particular decision is itself a complex decision-making process. The design phase, for example, may call for new intelligence activities; problems at any given level generate sub-problems that in. two, have  their intelligence, design, and choice phase, and so on. there are wheels within wheels. Nevertheless, the three large phases are often clearly discernible as the organizational decision process unfolds.

They are closely related to the stages in problem solving first described by John Dewey ;

• What is the problem ?
• What are the alternative ?
• Which alternative is best ?

It may be objected that I have ignored the task of carrying out decision. I shall merely observe by the way that seeing that decisions are executed is again decision-making activity. A broad policy decision creates a new condition for the organization's executives that calls for the design and choice of a course of oction for executing the policy. Executing policy, then, is indistinguishable from making more detailed policy. For this reason, I shall feel justified in taking my pattern of decision making as a paradigm for most executive activity.

So is article about " The Executives as Decision Maker " may be useful

*)sources and references , The new science of management decision, Helbert A. Simon, Haper 

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