The TWO tasks for your portfolio:
1- Complete Assessments 1a and 1b and 1c.Aim for 1500 words.
2- Complete a report analysing the business decisions for either ONE of the following examples. Aim for 2000 words.
Consider that writing critically - is about building on your existing skills to be able to present strong insights into the topic area you are looking at. So you need to be able to:
- Understanding and comprehend that topic – understand the key points, assumptions, and arguments
- Analyse that topic– thinking about how these key points fit together and relate to each other
- Compare those key points – explore how they are similar or different
- Synthesise – bring together different sources and information and understanding to help analyse and compare those key points. You will be making connections between the different sources and help you shape your thoughts and support your ideas and views in your writing.
- Evaluate the breadth of a topic– Assess the worth of a view or an idea in terms of its relevance to your needs and purpose in your writing. Do you think the view or idea is very important to your discussion? How? In what ways? Consider the evidence upon which those ideas or views are based and how it relates to other relevant ideas or views you have read about.
- Apply your understanding – use your evaluation to help you address questions and tasks in the same area
- Justify – use the thinking you have developed by doing the steps above to develop arguments, draw conclusions, make inferences, and identify implications.
You may also find it helpful to think further on two important areas when developing your critical thinking skills:
1-Question the data
Always consider the evidence about any issue you are exploring. Think about how valid the data is? How reliable is it? Was it gathered in a robust and repeatable manner? Views coming out of an issue you are exploring need to be supported and substantiated; theories proven; references, facts and bias checked; and research methods investigated.
2-Recognising bias
Value free research does not exist in the social sciences. Research always draws upon preferred views of data and evidence and you write about those views to support your own thinking about a topic. This is not necessarily a problem but is something you need to consider in how you write and how you interpret the work of others.
Learning Outcomes Assessed in Task 1
LO1-Appreciate the complex nature of the decision-making process and the role that decision analysis tools can play in supporting business decisions.
LO2-Synthesise and critically evaluate applications of decision analysis tools from multiple literature sources in accordance with sound principles of research and academic writing.
LO3 -Systematically structure and analyse decision problems in order to reach logical conclusions
LO4 -Apply appropriate decision tools analysis and effectively communicate the results
TASK 2
You are required to write a report that analyses the business/management decisions in one of the summary examples presented.
- The presented summaries are outlined in synopsis form to help guide you towards decision making issues and topics in those organisations and their environments. THESE ARE NOT COMPLETE CASE STUDIES. YOU ARE EXPECTED TO UNDERTAKE YOUR OWN RESEARCH TO DEVELOP YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING OF THE DECISION-MAKING PROBLEM PRESENTED.
The following is a listing of decision-making topics that are engaged with during the module and from which you can explore decision making themes in the summaries presented.
- Decision Audit
- Decision Types
- VJY Decision Making
- Organized Anarchies
- Garbage Can Model of Decision Making
- Broad perspectives on the approaches to decision making – RATIONAL, ADMINISTRATIVE and BARGAINING (POLITICAL)
- Rationality
- Cynefin Framework
- Decision Making (DM) styles
- Power
- Post modern view of power
- Non linear thinking
- Invariant evidence (incl. cognitive paradoxes)
- Certainty
- Expected Utility
- Marginal Utility
- Expected Value (EV or sometimes Expected Monetary Value)
- Psychodynamic Decision Making
- Cognitive dissonance Decision Making
- Behaviouralism Decision Making
- Humanism Decision Making
- Schemas and types
- Heuristics
- Ethical decision making
- Consequentialist Decision Making (CDM) (This is sometimes called utilitarianism).
- Deonotological decision making (DDM)
- Virtue decision making (VDM)
- Simple/Tame decisions
- Decision Analysis
- States of nature
- Decision Trees
- Messy Problems
- Wicked problems
- Problems with discrete solution sets
- Problems with very large solution sets
- Probability
- Decision Trees and logic
- Expected Monetary Value
- Expected Utility
- Cumulative Risk Profile
- Sensitivity (one and two way)
- Certainty Equivalence
- Bayesian Revision
- Risk Averse / Happy (Conservative / Optimistic Decision maker)
- Data forecasting and modelling (linear and non linear)
- Soft Systems Analysis
- Factors shaping operational and strategic decisions
- Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)
