Introduction:-
Decision making is an integral part of the most of the top manager's duties. Not even a single day passes without taking decisions particularly in modern organisations. Hence, management and decision making are considered as inseparable. In fact, whatever a manager does, he can do it only by taking some decision. All matters related to planning, organization, staffing, directing and controlling are engrossed in decision making process. That is why it is aptly pointed out that management is essentially a decision-making process. The survival and future success of any enterprise is directly related to the ability to take timely and appropriate decision by the executives. Thus decision-making is said to be the heart of management.
Lot of planning exercise is to be initiated by the manager before taking any viable decision. The manager has to carefully plan and decide what to do or what not to do. Wrong decisions quite often are proved to be either costly or futile. To prevent such losses, decision-making process remains to be the core are in all planned activities of the modern corporations.
"The selection from among alternatives of a course of action", according to this definition, picking one course of action among alternatives available is termed as decision-making as per Koontz and Weinrich. In the words of George Terry,"decision-making is the selection of a particular course of action, based on some criteria, from two or more possible alternatives." We can define this concept also as the process of choosing between various alternatives for achieving a specified goal. Every decision must take into consideration needs and future uncertainties. As per Herbert Simon there are three major steps in the decision making process.
Decision making is about choosing from several options or ideas and taking action