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Decision Making in Complex Environments

In: Business and Management

Submitted By dcon02
Words 771
Pages 4
Decision making in complex environments is a significant characteristic of leadership. Managers and leaders are paid to make decisions. There is not a day that goes by that you do not read or hear something on the news or business press that makes you wonder, What were they thinking? or Who made that decision? "Good decision making has often been described as following an orderly and logical process from framing a problem, assembling alternatives, evaluating them, and choosing the best one to implement" (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, pg. 116). Managers are pressure to make good decisions. According to Hoch, Kunreuther, and Gunther, 2001, there are a variety of new tools managers can use to make decision in complex environments. These tools are: navigating data-rich environments, navigating systematic complexity and navigating multistakeholder and environmental complexity. Navigating data-rich environments discuss the use about tools such as, data mining and data warehousing in business decisions. "Divining trends from weak signals in huge databases and making sense of them to understand consumer behavior, internal costs and supplier performance have come center stage in the past decade" (Hoch, Kunreuther, & Gunther, 2001, pg. 121). Nowadays, databases are available for research what happened in the past, this information help enterprises make decisions that will have a future impact in their companies. Wiederhold (2000) stated, today, databases, and web-based resources, accessed through effective communications, make information about the past rapidly available. Decision makers have to use intuition or prediction tools to use the information obtained from the databases. A good example would be on insurance companies using databases to determine their risk portfolios for a specific geographical area. The company would have to consider certain aspects, like,

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