44.312
Security Management
home page > Unit 4: Planning & decision making
Decision
Making
Process of identifying,
evaluating, and selecting alternatives to solve a specific issue.
Often,
when a company encounters the same type of patterns repeatedly,
there are rules developed governing decision-making, so only
senior executives make true decisions. In companies that face
constantly-changing circumstances, (such as security companies)
more people get opportunities to decide -- but may find it difficult
because they haven't been able to practice decision making first
in stable, bureaucratic environments. Security companies, because
of the nature of their business, must make certain that all individuals,
top to bottom, have "a comprehensive understanding of the
decision-making process."
3 principal phases, according to Simon (1960):
- finding occasions to make decisions
- finding possible courses of action
- deciding among the courses of action.
There's also a decision-making continuum: from "programmed decisions" which are so common and ritualized that there's a procedure already in place to handle them whenever they're encountered, to ones that are unprecedented and there's no framework (such as response decisions after 9/11).
- Rational decision-making model
Classical approach, it tries to deal with decision-making in rational fashion,with 4 sequential phases:- define problem
- diagnose causes
- design solutions
- select best solution
It assumes "the decision maker is aware of all of the available options or courses of action. Based on a comprehensive and exhaustive understanding of the issue and alternatives, the decision maker can choose the option that maximizes the value of that decision (Vecchio, 1988)." It also assumes that the decision maker can meet two requirements: able to select best plan that will provide highest positive benefit to the organization (this is called the closure axiom), and that decisions are "transactive," i.e., the decision maker can rank order the alternatives, choosing the best alternative first.
Problems with this approach:
- many decisions must be made in uncertain situations, no obvious right or wrong alternatives. Can't know all alternatives at the time of the decision. Can't really be sure these decisions are rational.
- Some decision makers assume their decisions are rational, leading to "hyperrationality," in which decision makers don't admit they had to decide on the basis of partial information.(Shulman 1997).
- According to Simon, (1957), best you can hope for is "bounded rationality," in which your rationality is constrained by factors such as incomplete knowledge of all of the factors in the environment, or by your lack of education. That leads to "satisfycing" decision-making: it is impossible to make optimal decision because of limited knowledge, so you find a solution that is good enough -- satisfactory (Simon, 1957) by using guesses, hunches, estimates.