Decision Making And Business Performance

This breakthrough study examines how business decisions explain successful and unsuccessful performance. Real world and academic research is evaluated, including interviews and cases studies, to create a model of how decisions and performance are connected for businesses of all sizes. Recommendations are made to optimize decision making and projections about the future of decision making and performance are provided.

-Identify your critical decisions. Focus on those that matter most to your company's performance. --

Over the past ten years, there has been growing interest in the process of strategic decision-making among both managers and researchers. Strategic decisions are important for five main reasons: They are large-scale, risky and hard to reverse; they are a bridge between deliberate and emerging strategies; they can be a major source of organizational learning; they play an important part in the development of individual managers and they cut accross functions and academic disciplines. Strategic Decisions summarizes the current state of the art in research on strategic decision-making, with chapters prepared by leading strategy researchers. The editors also present implications for current application and proposed directions for future research.

Originally published in 1981. Risk is a problem which all business decision makers have to cope with. The problem is not insurmountable, however, as there now exist well-established techniques for minimising risk and for calculating which of various available options is the optimal one to pursue. This book outlines and discusses these techniques and the theories behind them. Unlike many economic theories which only rarely have any practical applications, the techniques put forward in this book can be used by real businessmen to solve real business problems. The book concentrates on decision-making in two main areas: the allocation of a firm’s resources and the selection of new investments; and the techniques and theories discussed fall into three broad groups: linear programming, decision theory and capital market theory. Intended as an advanced undergraduate textbook for students taking business economics or managerial economics courses, this valuable book will interest specialists and students involved in management studies, microeconomics, strategic planning, operational research, accounting and MBA programmes.

A brand new collection of state-of-the-art tools for making better business decisions… 4 authoritative books bring together hundreds of bite-size, easy-to-use techniques for optimizing every business decision, choice, interaction, and negotiation! Your decisions drive your business performance and determine your career success. Whether you’re collaborating, leading, negotiating, or persuading, those decisions must be consistently sharp – and this 4 book collection will help you sharpen every decision you make. Start with Robert Gunther’s The Truth About Making Smart Decisions: 50 powerful bite-size “truths” about making better real-world decisions when it matters most. Gunther shows how to systematically prepare to make better decisions... get the right information, without getting buried in useless data... minimize risks and then act decisively... handle emotions... make better group decisions... profit from mistakes... and much more. Next, William S. Kane focuses on the decision to change – and to lead change. In The Truth About Thriving in Change, Kane shares 49 powerful decision-making “truths” about change leadership: which skills you need most, and how to develop them... how to lead change without eroding commitment or productivity... why you must start fast, and “run before you walk”... when to persuade, when to educate, and when to “use force”... how to create the right cultural framework for successful change, and more. Next, Leigh Thompson’s The Truth About Negotiations helps you optimize every decision associated with successful negotiations. Thompson provides realistic game plans that work in any scenario, showing how to create win-win deals by leveraging carefully collected information. Learn how to prepare quickly and efficiently… handle imperfect negotiating situations… establish trust with someone you don’t yet trust… recognize when to walk away. Thompson guides through planning strategy, identifying your “best alternative to a negotiated agreement,” making the right first offer to control the process, resolving difficult disputes, and achieving the goals that matter most. Finally, in The Truth About Getting the Best From People, Second Edition, Martha Finney turns to day-to-day management decision-making, offering 60+ powerful techniques -- including new ways to persuade, manage virtual teams, overcome unconscious decision-making biases, and identify/cultivate high performers. These four books offer definitive, evidence-based principles for optimizing your decision-making throughout your entire management career! From world-renowned decision-making experts Robert E. Gunther, William S. Kane, Leigh Thompson, and Martha I. Finney

How do executives make decisions? Based on what? Are their decisions conscious or unconscious? Can they explain each decision they make? What tools can they use to improve their decision-making process? What rules of thumb (heuristics) can they use when faced with decision-making challenges? These are some of the questions this book is about. During the past 30 years, as an entrepreneur and senior executive of several medium-sized Canadian hi-tech businesses, the author observed his decision-making processes to be based either on experience or on advice received from colleagues. Seldom were decisions based on formal or informal academic-based methods. Discussing decision-making methods with other executives of comparable business backgrounds confirms they rely on similar methods when looking for solutions to challenging business problems. There is no substitute for years of experience in any human endeavour. However, tapping into some of the methods and lessons learned from personal experience can result in useful principles for others to follow. These principles might be useful especially for entrepreneurs interested in building their businesses or executives looking for some additional help in acquiring a better decision-making mouse-trap.

In the current fast-paced and constantly changing business environment, it is more important than ever for organizations to be agile, monitor business performance, and meet with increasingly stringent compliance requirements. Written by pioneering consultants and bestselling authors with track records of international success, The Decision Model: A Business Logic Framework Linking Business and Technology provides a platform for rethinking how to view, design, execute, and govern business logic. The book explains how to implement the Decision Model, a stable, rigorous model of core business logic that informs current and emerging technology. The authors supply a strong theoretical foundation, while succinctly defining the path needed to incorporate agile and iterative techniques for developing a model that will be the cornerstone for continual growth. Because the book introduces a new model with tentacles in many disciplines, it is divided into three sections: Section 1: A Complete overview of the Decision Model and its place in the business and technology world Section 2: A Detailed treatment of the foundation of the Decision Model and a formal definition of the Model Section 3: Specialized topics of interest on the Decision Model, including both business and technical issues The Decision Model provides a framework for organizing business rules into well-formed decision-based structures that are predictable, stable, maintainable, and normalized. More than this, the Decision Model directly correlates business logic to the business drivers behind it, allowing it to be used as a lever for meeting changing business objectives and marketplace demands. This book not only defines the Decision Model and but also demonstrates how it can be used to organize decision structures for maximum stability, agility, and technology independence and provide input into automation design.

Data Science for Business and Decision Making covers both statistics and operations research while most competing textbooks focus on one or the other. As a result, the book more clearly defines the principles of business analytics for those who want to apply quantitative methods in their work. Its emphasis reflects the importance of regression, optimization and simulation for practitioners of business analytics. Each chapter uses a didactic format that is followed by exercises and answers. Freely-accessible datasets enable students and professionals to work with Excel, Stata Statistical Software®, and IBM SPSS Statistics Software®. Combines statistics and operations research modeling to teach the principles of business analytics Written for students who want to apply statistics, optimization and multivariate modeling to gain competitive advantages in business Shows how powerful software packages, such as SPSS and Stata, can create graphical and numerical outputs