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Decision Making Processes

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Decision Making Processes
Anthony D. Smith, Angel Shorty, and Timothy Stearman
University of Phoenix

Problem formation and identification vary in contrast from one organization to another. Organizations use different tools and techniques to solve problems that affect their internal and external stakeholders. Companies know that their reputation and reliability to their stakeholders rely on the decisions they make every day. Because of the importance of almost every decision that affects a stakeholder, companies have implemented models of decision making in which an outlined form of collaboration and goal setting have reduced the negative impacts of their decision making. Decisions are the key to their success. In the following text we will look at three different organizations and how the decision making processes affects their internal and external stakeholders. Unilever North America Ice Cream (NAIC) Unilever is a global leader in manufacturing that produces many products ranging from Ben&Jerry’s Ice Cream to Axe personal care products. Their organization has their corporate headquarters in Switzerland where all of the top executives in the organization reside and conduct and communicate their business through what they call Virtual Regional Sites. Unilever uses the coalition model in their decision making. For example, all parts of the organization are divided up into different buckets such as safety, overall equipment efficiency, quality, reliability and etc. all have their own agenda and goals. All buckets compete for being the most important bucket within the organization. This creates a lot of competition amongst the different buckets which is positive advantage for the organization because each buckets is constantly attempting to position them to put processes in place that improve the overall performance of organization. On the other hand the coalition model puts a lot of stress on the organization at the plant levels because all buckets are heavily influencing the plants to pay more attention to their goals. This contributes to breaks in the plants efficiency somewhat because of the difficulty in meeting all of the buckets goals as the confusion as to what is more important.

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