Course Learning Outcomes-Covered
Identify and analyze different perspectives on understanding problems for different situations. (3.1)
Utilize different decision making tools to enhance problem solving and decision making approaches. (4.3)
Identify organized alternatives and select among possible alternative to evaluate business options. (2.10)
Create a Decision Making and Problem Solving worksheet document. (4.5)
Critical Thinking Questions: (Marks 5)
Question 1: (1 Mark)
Suppose you are a member of a group asked to find ways to cut costs throughout your organization for the upcoming year. Sales have fallen sharply, and the company is in danger of going out of business. After gathering information, your group concludes that the company will save the most money by freezing pay for a year, despite a tradition of annual salary increases. How can you make sure this is a fair decision? How can you make sure that others in the organization will see it as a fair decision?
Question 2: Case Analysis (2 Marks)
Care, a health consultancy company in Saudi Arabia, is studying the economic benefits of a program of preventative COVID-19 flu vaccinations. Care has to give advice to government for COVID-19 vaccination. If vaccinations are not introduced then the estimated cost to the government if flu strikes in the next year is SR.70m with probability 0.1, SR.100m with probability 0.3 and SR.150m with probability 0.6. It is estimated that such a program will cost SR.70m and that the probability of flu striking in the next year is 0.75.
One alternative open to the committee is to institute an “early-warning” monitoring scheme (costing SR.30m) which will enable it to detect an outbreak of flu early and hence institute a rush vaccination program (costing SR.100m because of the need to vaccinate quickly before the outbreak spreads).
Question
As a consultant of Care, Develop a decision tree for alternatives and make recommendation to Indian government that which alternative can maximize expected economic benefits?
Question 3: (1 Mark)
Decision support tools rely on objective, mathematical data. What part does ethics play in using decision support software?
Question 4: (1 Mark)
If you collect too much information for analyzing a decision, you can suffer from analysis paralysis, where you spend too much time thinking about a decision rather than making one. Recall a major financial decision you made recently, such as of a car or housing purchase or rental. Describe your process for making the decision. How could analysis paralysis have affected this process?
