Management 5000 Final Exam
Lisa Halvorson
Webster University
The Influence of Individual Values on Decision Making The old adage “hind sight is 20/20” or “arm chair quarterbacks” are colloquialisms used daily in the military. Judging other leader’s failures after the fact is easy, but trying to make a timely decision under extreme pressure like a small arms attack to keep everyone alive is not so easy. According to Brasfield, there are barriers to effective decision making like psychological biases, time pressures, social realities, and group decisions. In order to understand these barriers, one must first look at the characteristics and stages of managerial decisions (2012). Programmed and nonprogrammed decisions, information uncertainty and risk, and conflict like psychological or between individuals or groups are the characteristics of decision-making. Organizations make programmed decisions based on standards, policies, guidelines, rules, and regulations. Conventional decision-making is the Army’s term for programmed decisions. The Army uses doctrine, standard operating procedures, rules, regulations, and tactical techniques and procedures to make decisions. Leaders in the Army sometimes find it difficult to make timely decisions in unstable environments, especially in the current operational environments of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army sees operating in these types of environments as a risk and mitigates it by creating flexible and adaptive leaders who base irregular decisions or nonprogrammed decisions on the ethics and values of the military. However, establishing commander’s critical information requirements for Battalion levels and higher is necessary for timely and informative decision-making efforts. Prioritizing missions is dependent upon the objectives, locations, and the risks. For example, company commanders at the tactical level cannot call in supporting assets, like air defense
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