Qualitative versus quantitative decision

making in business
Relevance of the topic is that decision-making is an integral part of the
management process and one of the fundamental principles of sustainable
development is a strategic and operational management of companies. Making
processes of strategic and operational management decisions are the central point
of managers, because it provides effective solutions to control the movement of
enterprises to market success. In order to improve the efficiency of management
decision-making in management science have been established quantitative and
qualitative methods of decision-making. The main idea of this essay is a study of
the structure of management decisions. Description of the stages of development
and management decision-making; representation of the totality of methods of
management decision-making; consideration of methods for making strategic and
operational decisions in the organization. I want to put your attention on the main
question of this topic? What is the difference between quantitative and qualitative
research? In a simplified form, the quantitative study generates numerical data that
can be converted into numbers. Qualitative research produces non-numeric data. In
the quantitative study, collected and analyzed only data that can be measured.
Qualitative research is focused on collecting data mainly verbal rather than
measurements. The information collected is analyzed in interpretive, subjective,
impressionistic or even diagnostic manner.
Firstly, quantitative research involves conducting various surveys, based on
the use of structured closed-type questions that are answered by a large number of
respondents. The main objective of quantitative research is to obtain a numerical
evaluation of market conditions or the respondents' reactions to an event. Such
studies are used when the need for accurate, statistically reliable numerical data.
Depending on the research objectives, the proposed methodology: statistical
observation, summary and grouping of primary data, descriptive analysis, output
analysis, analysis of the relationship, predictive analysis, apartment, street and
telephone interviews, expert survey, desk research, Retail-audit and so on.
Secondly, qualitative methods involve collecting information in free form.
They focus not on statistical measurements, and based on the understanding,
explanation and interpretation of empirical data, are the source of hypotheses and
productive ideas. The problem of qualitative research methods - to get exploration
data, not quantitative distribution of opinions. In qualitative methods in order to
explain to interpret concepts are used not numbers, and words. In other words, they
do not respond to the question "how?" rather than "what?", "how?" and "why?"
Benefits of qualitative methods are: it has lower cost for researching; it helps reveal
the hidden motives of purchases and behavior of customer; and it allows to identify
some characteristics that can be hidden during the quantitative analysis. In
addition, it has following types of information gathering: questionnaire, direct
observation, experiment and cases.

In conclusion, I want to say that any method has advantages and

disadvantages, which vary depending on the topic of discussion. If the study seeks
to answer the question by numerical evidence, it is necessary to use the
quantitative study. However, if you want to explain why exactly this happened, or
why there is a specific phenomenon, it is necessary to use qualitative research.
Some studies combine both types, allowing them to complement each other. For
example, if you want to find out what a person's behavior is dominant in relation to
a particular object or event, and at the same time, the goal - to find out why this is
the case, the ideal would just use both methods.