Managerial Decision Making Homework Assignment 1 By: Amritpal Singh

Taxonomy of Decisions:
1. Subjective and Objective decisions: One of the basic dichotomies of decisions is the
inclusion or exclusion of subject specific information that can be used in the decision
making process. The inclusion of some subject matter can lead to a better decision
while in some cases it is the opposite.
2. Personal and Non personal decisions: Another facet of decision making is personal
decisions versus decisions made in the professional life. Many a times, people have to
assume different roles and personalities, which might even be at conflict, to handle
situations different in personal and non-personal roles.
3. Routine and Non routine decisions: As was discussed in class, many decisions are
routine and programmed in our subconscious, while other require deliberate thinking.
4. Business decisions: As a manager, one often encounters decisions which might be
strategic, tactical, human-oriented, operational, etc. Every different type of decision
needs different perspectives, learning, actions, and has a different impact.
5. Decisions with long term versus short term impact: As it is clear from the name itself,
these two types need different skill levels of the manager, and different strategies.
6. Legal and Illegal decisions
7. Ethical and Unethical decisions
Decision making process: An ideal decision making process would be one which begins
with the realization that a decision needs to be made. After this, the stakeholders involved
in the decision making process gather more information to analyse the problem more
clearly. This information need not be only related to the problem but can also include the
information related to various factors that might later be used to choose a solution to the
problem and assist in the decision making process. After this detailed analysis of the
problem, one needs to identify which all alternatives are possible as a solution to the
problem in hand. After developing these alternatives, one needs to evaluate these
alternatives. In the process of evaluation of these alternatives, one needs to use the
previously identified information and also find new information to get evidence in the
favour of the best and the most feasible solution. After narrowing down the best solution,
one needs to implement it. After the implementation, the most important part is
retrospection and subsequently reviewing the decision and assessing the learnings, if any,
and then implementing them in any similar situation in the future.
What can go wrong? In the identification of problem phase, the possible problem is
identifying a problem that is too trivial or trivializing a vast problem. Also, one must be
careful while deciding the scope of the problem. In the information gathering phase, the
problem can be gathering too much information which might not be useful, or getting too
little information. In the stage of generating alternatives, one must be careful not to create
too many options which might not be practical to choose from, or create too little options
which reduce the entire scope of the problem. In the evaluation of alternatives, the
problem can be that one can miss an important alternative due to herd-psychology in
groups or following the leader in high power distance countries. Implementation can go
wrong if one fails to implement as per the pre-decided blueprint of the solution, or if
one gets busy in implementing the minor details failing to see the large picture. In the
retrospection phase, one must be careful not to let the hindsight bias creeping into the
review process.
Comparison with my decision making process: My decision making process is
somewhat similar to the above except that I mostly fail to retrospect. One decision that
Managerial Decision Making Homework Assignment 1 By: Amritpal Singh
was discussed for the above discussion was my decision to choose University of
Lausanne for my Student exchange term from IIM-Bangalore, India.
Any changes in the course: Since I am new to HEC Lausanne and I am still trying to
understand the pedagogy and the teaching methodology, I think currently I shall not be
able to suggest any changes in the course, but in the case of an end term review of the
course, I shall definitely be able to answer whether some changes are required in the
course or not.

Assignment submitted by:
Amritpal Singh,
Exchange Student at HEC, Lausanne,
From Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India.
Assignment submitted to:
Ulrich Hoffrage