Decision Making Model

Decision Making Model

Making decisions are an essential part of life. A decision is a judgment or choice between two or more alternatives, and arises in an infinite number of situations from the resolution of a problem to the implementation of a course of action (Decision Making). The decision making process begins in our earliest years. Although our toughest decision would have been to choose cake or candy, it required for us to make a choice or decision. The decision making process can be used in different ways in managing an organization. Ethical issues may arise, controlling inventory, hiring or firing employees, delegating duties, and scheduling staff are just a few of the many ways managers use the decision making process. There a five steps in the decision making process. When making a decision you should identify the issue, undertake analysis, evaluate the options, identify choice, and implement the plan (Decision Making). In our discussion, we will relate the five steps to a few of the many ways managers make decisions.

Scheduling staff in the decision making process

The decision making process played a successful factor with implementing a new scheduling system. For several months, staffing in my organization has been a stressful issue. Employees felt overworked and management felt a need to decrease overtime hours. In my organization, all retail locations are open seven days a week. A normal work week would consist of 40 hours. For those who are scheduled to work both Saturday and Sunday would receive 13 hours or more for overtime. In the first step of the process, we identified employees were overworked by 104 hours per month. What are some alternatives? Management could hire two part-time workers for only the weekends or try to readjust the schedule by using the existing staff. Hiring two part-time workers would definitely take some of the load and stress from our full time employees. On the other hand, we would face another issue of additional wages. While adjusting the existing employee’s schedule would eliminate overtime and the pressure of feeling overworked. The new schedule would allow for any employee to receive other days off in the place of working Saturday and Sunday. By implementing this change, my company’s turnover rate has decreased and has saved approximately $20,000 a year in overtime wages.

Ethical dilemmas

Ethical decision-making refers to a process in which individuals can freely make a decision based on the evaluation of the interests of all parties when facing ethical dilemmas (Fang, 2006). Many companies may utilize code of ethics; however ethical dilemmas might be more useful to have a framework, such as the decision making process, in which to analyze and make ethical decisions. For example, all employees in my organization are given a 25 percent discount on all purchases. Before now, any cashier or sales representative could key in the discount by using the employee’s five digit identification. After several unethical purchases, we are now limited to who can key in the discount. Employee discounts can only be keyed in by management level and the purchase must be linking to the employee’s account. For instance, the employee