Decision Making Project Management Questions

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

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Conduct an Internet search for information on individual versus group decision making. Then, compare and contrast individual and group decision-making. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Are there certain decisions that are better suited to individual decision-making? What bounded awareness issues are found in individual versus group decision-making?

Ans:

Decision making is important part of business process. Process of decision making may involve individual or group. In organizational setting where all stakeholders are affected by the decisions, it is better to go for group decision making. Each of this type of decision making has some advantages and disadvantages.

Individual decision making:

When process of decision making is carried out without group, it is called individual decision making. This is a traditional type of decision making and works well in case, managers do not required input from the side of workers.

Group decision making:

For group decision making, different models are proposed. Consultation and consensus are two examples. Consultation takes the opinion of group members and takes it into consideration while making decisions. Consensus decision making involves the group members by posing several options to group and using most popular option for decision making (Whyte, 1993). Participation of group is required in both of these options.

Advantages:

Process of individual decision making is quicker than of group decision making as only one person is required and need to be consulted. Group decision making though can be difficult process, it can help cement the people by allowing them to provide input for decision making.

Disadvantage:

Individual decision making is ineffective if decision is going to affect whole group.

On the other hand, group decision making must be avoided if there is chance that a group might reach a consensus.

Q.2 Conduct an Internet or library search for information on "The Bay of Pigs Invasion." Discuss the failure of the invasion in terms of bounded awareness. In your opinion, what caused the poor decisions to be made? Could focalism and/or focusing illusion have played a part in this failure? If so, how?

Ans:

The Bay of pig invasion has been an unsuccessful attempt by U.S, backed Cuban exiles to over throw the government of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. This invasion created increased friction between Castro’s leftist regime and U.S government; in January, 1961, it led the president Dwight D. Eisenhower to break off diplomatic relations with Cuba. However, Even before this anti-revolutionary training had been given by central intelligence agency (Kornbluh, 1998) to Cuban exiles for possible invasion of Island. Eisenhower’s successor approved the invasion plan. President John F. Canady, in 1961 was the in-charge of Bay of Pigs invasion. A great number of details of the invasion were changed by him including the landing sites. As the real reason of invasion, John F. Canady also presented the possession of castor of Soviet tanks and weapon. Then invasion was failed completely. Some have view that this invasion resulted only in great popularity of Castro. Relationship of Castro is strengthened (Kornbluh, 1998) after Bay of Pig invasion, leading to Cuban missile crisis in 1962. A trade embargo of America still exists with Cuba to the present day. As result of failure of The Bay of Pig invasion, 68 of Cuban exile were dead; some were executed out of 1029 exiles, and remaining were sent to prison in Cuba on charges of treason.

Question 3:

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger was destroyed upon launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida killing all seven astronauts on board. Conduct a literature and an Internet search on the topics of the Challenger disaster and groupthink. Then, discuss how groupthink might have created decision-making problems for NASA and its booster contractor. 

Ans:

On Tuesday, January 28, 1986, at 11:38 a.m. space shuttle challenger was launched from Kennedy space center at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The challenger soared into sky, as people watched on their television sets; it then shockingly exploded just after 73 seconds after take-off. Including social studies teacher, all seven members died in this disaster. An investigation of the accident discovered that the O-rings of the right solid rocket booster had malfunctioned. However, even the destruction of space shuttle was due to hardware failure (Vaughan, 1990) of a solid rocket booster, O ring, it was the human decision to launch that itself was flawed. Faulty group decision support system was the basis of the resolution to launch, and further it is aggravated by the related mismanagement of information. Despite of this, there were also other contributing factors that led to create an environment for accident. A group decision support system existing between NASA and related shuttle developers played key role in this incident. The group decision support system between NASA and Thiokol, consisted of different place conference rooms that were equipped with a distributed (Vaughan, 1990) and connected computer interface. A little doubt, after critical analysis if GDSS, can be stated that environment from which NASA and its affiliated developers operated provided opportunity for a major human error.

Question 4:

Discuss the following statement. "It is important that organizational managers understand that bounded awareness can and will occur in decision making." In developing your discussion, cite a minimum of two sources other than your textbook.

Ans:

Bounded awareness is described as a well-documented observation that people overlook routinely important information for group decision making. Tendency of humans to become overly focus is one cause of it. Awareness is limited by focus, and important information may be missed if it is lying outside the range of focus. It is cited by cognitive scientists that human mind is inherently is not able to see certain things, due to limited imagination, humans have tough time imagination of what is not present. At the periphery of business, companies are often slow to recognize important development that turns out to be very important strategically (Bazerman & Chugh, 2006). Changes that occur too slowly are recognized very late, this may explain business scandals in part. Such as in case of Enron, accounting irregularities were slowly adopted. Executives, like the boiling frog, may have been lulled into a sense comfort, being unaware of that they were in hot water. The challenger space shuttle disaster can be quoted as example here, it was situation where required information existed but not sought to. Organizational structure can institutionalize bounded awareness. Organization has multiple layers of management that hinder the information flow, so it is important for managers to be aware of bounded awareness and its existence in process of decision making.

 Q.5: Discussion Question

Discuss bounded awareness and its various components. How has bounded awareness prevented you from making a good decision in your life or business?

Ans:

Bounded awareness is referred as a process when people overlook routinely important information for decision making. Bounded awareness specifies the situations where people know only what they want to know and avoid extra information. It is also stated by experts that human mind cannot see certain things. Being limited to extent of focus only, may result in loss of important information which is missed only due to limited focus. Sometimes, group dynamics also hinder information sharing. Teams may discuss information but these discussions likely to include information that is widely known and unique information is not discussed and shared. In decision making process, bounded awareness can occur at various points. When focus is only on one task due to bounded awareness it will result in poor decision making at the side of executive in organizational settings. As executives have to be alert and actively informed about threats and opportunities affecting organization, bounded awareness can result in missed opportunity for organization or it may be suffering from a potential threat that can be avoided in case of well-equipped information (Bazerman & Chugh, 2006).

Question 6 

The ability to read people and adapt your behavior to fit what will work most effectively with them is a good skill or talent for a leader to have. Why is this, especially for a project manager? Discuss the ethical implications of making people accountable for tasks over which you give them no authority.

Manager have critical job of managing not only the work at organization but also humans involved in the process. It requires a more strategic approach when it comes to managing human resources, as humans are not machines and they must be treated differently. If a manger has ability to identify different behaviors of people and can adopt appropriate strategies to handle them, it can come up with improved results. Specifically in the context of project management, where people gather to complete a specific task within a prescribed period of time, if manager have skill to read the behavior of people and adopt his behavior accordingly (Kouzes & Posner, 2011), it will result in highly improved results in terms of efficiency and effectiveness (Bazerman & Chugh, 2006). It will likely to produce more from limited available resources. Moreover, this skill makes a manager an effective leader who can come up with efficiently leading the employees toward achievement of stated objectives. Ethical aspect is present is every aspect of management and is very important to consider as well. A case can be quoted as example that will elaborate the ethical implications in managing people. When you have given people authority to make decisions, it is not ethical practice to make them accountable for these tasks.

Question 7

Since the word "communication" is such a broad term, give 3 possible specific communication problems that can plague the project manager. Discuss why a sexual harassment lawsuit might be considered a harsh example of a failure to communicate?

Ans:

Three possible problems of communication include the following:

Differences in expectations:

When process of communication is not affective one and have flaws in it, it may cause number of problems. When goals and objectives are not communicated explicitly and with all members of project, it may result in different perceptions with different people in terms of what is expected of them being a part of project. Project manager must strive to ensure that everyone associated with project has a common set of expectation in terms of what is to be delivered, when to be delivered and at what cost.

People are surprised:

When communication is not proper and effective, even a minor change in process or setup will be surprising for employees involved in decision making. In addition to routinely and proper communication, proactive type of communication may produce more effective results. Communicating any change or potential problem will make people ready for change.

Status of project is unknown:

When information is not communicated properly and on regular basis, member of project may be unaware of even status of project. On some projects, communication is short and people do not know what is going and they are unable to make good decisions when they have not proper and good source of information.

Sexual harassment lawsuit can be considered as harsh example of failure to communicate as its many parts hinders the process of effective communication. Fear of lawsuits, hinders the project managers to communicate the information with all members freely and properly.

Discussion Question:

As a project manager, you may at some time be called upon to design and implement projects that may change the culture of your organization/company. Describe your approach to implementing change if the general manager subscribes to the "inspire and motivate" approach to cultural change.

Culture is powerful and all pervasive; it defines society of humans and can also drive social change. Organizational culture is also holding similar attributes. The attitudes, beliefs, values, experiences of people working within organization can have a tangible effect on changing initiatives especially in case of major changes as mergers and acquisitions and also in implementing the change process (Oakland, 2012). The ability of an organization to adopt the changes can determine whether it can achieve long term aspirations or not. Organizational culture is complex (Kouzes & Posner,2011) and can works with intangibles, adopting intangible elements as drivers of positive change will work well. Motivating and inspiring employees with examples and developing a culture of rewarding the efforts of people involved in organizational process, being a role model as high achievers and inspiring them will make attitude of employees more flexible for change. Introducing the values and practices that develop flexible attitude toward change in culture will help to incorporate cultural changes easily.