You are the Director of Human Resources for a prosperous
Travel Agency “Destination Adventure!”
Using the Internet, search for a business whose primary
purpose is to help other companies make better decisions. In your search be
careful to look for the term “decision making,” “improving
decisions,” or “decision analysis” and then look beyond the
businesses home webpage for information that can help you address the questions
below. If you find you cannot answer the project questions you may want to
expand your search.
Once you have identified the company you want to discuss and
analyze use information from the company’s website as well as reviews of that
company from other sources (this may require additional research) to answer the
following questions:
1. Identify
the company (by name) and explain (in your own words, paraphrasing from the
information you’ve researched) their primary purpose or mission. Don’t simply
copy the company’s mission statement.
2. What
services or products are offered that are designed to help other businesses
improve their decision making? Select one product or service from your list and
describe how that product or service is designed to help improve decision
making (if you don’t think it will help improve decision making you may want to
select another product or service)?
3. Will this
product or service help other decision makers impact how decisions are
“framed”? If so, how?”
You are the Director of Human Resources for a prosperous
Travel Agency “Destination Adventure!” The company has been so
successful that in the past two years the number of employees within your
company has tripled and many of the company policies need to be changed. After
a recent review you’ve discovered one of those is the company “performance
appraisal/performance evaluation” program.
It appears many managers and supervisors are being
inconsistent in the way they rate or evaluate their employees. You want to
identify and head off any potential problems.
Your preliminary analysis has discovered it’s not a process
or administrative issue but the way in which your managers and supervisors rate
and measure their employee’s performance. Before you can take any corrective
actions (training, etc.) it will be important for you to do two things; (1)
identify specific problems & (2) come up with solutions to those problem to
prevent them from reoccurring,
Your objective is to prepare a research paper using the
assigned readings from our textbook in this Unit (chapters 1-4 and chapter 6),
the full-text database in the AIU Library, and/or other internet resources to
address the following:
1. Identify
and describe a minimum of 3 problems, relating to decision making that occur
when managers complete performance reviews. Since the focus of our class is on
decision making focus on problems that relate to decision issues in your
findings. Be sure you identify each problem separately (don’t put all your
findings in a single large block paragraph).
2. Provide
specific suggestions for each of the problems you identified so that
supervisors can eliminate or reduce each of the problems identified. Try to
avoid “general” recommendations as they rarely cover or help correct
all the problems you will identify.
You were asked to observe a recent sales meeting between
Dawn, (a production manager at your company) and a sales representative from
“Widgets R Us”. Widgets R Us recently sold your company a major piece
of production equipment and now wants to see your company add on options and
services for that same piece of equipment.
The salesperson has come prepared and shows you and Dawn a
flashy video showing the advantages of adding the additional items and
services. Dawn is impressed by the assertions made in the video, particularly
those relating to additional cost savings, but is concerned about the
additional price of the options and services. The salesperson approaches the
topic of “cost” with great skill explaining that “While the
initial investment may seem rather steep, I think you’ll find over the life of
the equipment that it averages out to about $.75 a day. I think you’ll find
that’s less than the cost of a can of soda a day. Isn’t the potential for
greater efficiencies and possible cost savings worth the cost of a daily can of
soda?”
Dawn, upon hearing this, admits that this sounds reasonable
and agrees to purchase the additional options and service.
As the observer your objective is to prepare a research
paper addressing the decision making in this situation. Your paper should
address and discuss the following:
1. Identify
how Dawn “framed” her decision. You may want to outline or flowchart
her thought process (a way of identifying her decision frame).
2. What
factors would have led Dawn to come to a different decision (in other words an
alternative “frame”)
3. What do
you believe are the implications of “framing” on our judgments and on
our attempts to influence others? Are there moral considerations? Why or why
not?
