206LON Business Management and Decision Ma.docx

206LON: Business Management and Decision
Making Process
Week 5 – Seminar: Software-Generated Information for
Decision Making
Software-Generated Information
in Hospitality
Information Systems Used in the Hotel Industry
Information systems in the Hotel industry refer to computer
systems in a hotel that supply information about that hotel’s
business operations.
Information systems typically include all computerised systems
which are used to gather data continuously both for use
internally and externally.
Information systems play a crucial role in the hotel industry as
they facilitate planning, management, overall operations of the
hotels as well as policymaking.
So where and how can we use hotel management software and
why are they useful?

Financial Reports: A competitive hotel property management
software provides you with financial and business reports
regarding your hotel business. You can learn about room
occupancy ratios, the duration of stay of your guests, payment
collection methods, and similar statistical forecasts for your
hotel.
2. Hotel Administration: Hotel property management software
helps you learn and execute marketing drills, send promotional
emails, organise staff training, and develop in-house
communication systems to bring ease in the processes.
Food service management: Hospitality management Software
can not only help send real-time information to kitchen units
but can also track inventory, order goods automatically and
assess profitability and improvement areas.
Accounting: With the options to carry out accounting, you can
assess profits to cost ratios, prepare bills, and also make
payments to vendors and travel agents.
Online Bookings and Reservations: With online booking and
reservation options, you can manage your hotel website, offer
room rates to customers, put new offers and deals over the
internet, and book rooms for your customers based on pre-
deposit policies.
Check-Ins and Check-Outs: Hotel management software
allows you to manage check-ins and check-outs of your
customers. You can allot rooms, print check-in cards,
receive online payments, and extend stays of your

customers through a single software.
Rate Management: It is very important to manage your rates for
the successful running of your business. You can devise plans
and provide your customers with variable room rates and offer
discount deals.
Housekeeping: You can develop lists of check-ins and check-
outs and manage their housekeeping. The software allows you to
maintain communication with your housekeeping staff. You can
assign rooms to maids, develop their task lists, and review room
status before and after the housekeeping service.
Property Management Systems
(PMS)
What is Hotel PMS?
Hotel property management systems manage all aspects of hotel
business operations, including the delivery of superior guest
experiences. Traditionally, a hotel property management system
(PMS) was defined as a platform that enabled a hotel or group
of hotels to manage front-office capabilities, such as:
booking reservations,
guest check-in/check-out,
room assignment,
managing room rates,
and billing.
Hotel PMS NOW integrates to other onsite services that impact

the guest's complete experience, including:
Food and beverage operations
Housekeeping and maintenance management
Sales and catering execution for group bookings and event
management
Revenue management
Distribution across multiple channels
Spa management
The Advantages of Hotel PMS
The consumer's travel journey begins by selecting a destination
while simultaneously shopping for a hotel. That pre-stay
shopping and booking interaction, their on-property engagement
with the hotel and its staff, their in-room experience, and their
sharing of feedback on social media post-stay are all part of
their guest experience.
Hoteliers are challenged with providing a personalised guest
experience while operating an effective hotel business.
Hotel PMS offers many benefits for the hotel. They include:
Hotel PMS FeatureHotel PMS BenefitEnhanced Check-
In/Check-Out Capabilities
Provide anytime, anywhere service to your guests using a
mobile-enabled cloud-based hotel PMS
Untether your front-desk staff so they can check guests in,
assign rooms, enable guest services, and check guests out
wherever there is internet connectivity
Improved Housekeeping Service
Increase housekeeping efficiency with instant updates on

housekeeping mobile devices when customers check out, freeing
up rooms for cleaning
Enable greater flexibility with room management and improve
response time for room-service tasks
Identify and manage room-maintenance needs, ensuring rooms
are clean and in perfect condition
Integrated Hotel Back-Office Systems
Connect operations and financial processes by leveraging
prebuilt integrations to accounts receivable, accounts payable,
payment gateways, hotel industry applications, and property
infrastructure devices
Integrate accounts receivable and commission handling
Ensure accurate guest folios for faster, more accurate billing
Effective Hotel Distribution Management
Increase room occupancy and ADR through real-time rate and
availability management across distribution channels
Boost sales through direct booking channels on brand website
Improved Hotel Revenue Management
Empower managers to improve ADR with extensive options for
setting rates and advanced rate-management features for manual
and semi-automated revenue management
Better Managed Customer Data
Centralize and secure customer data and improve the quality
and accuracy of guest profiles
Understand customer buying patterns so you can define more
targeted packages and services
Ensure compliance with national and international data-
compliance rules

Deploying Hotel PMS
Until recently, hotel PMS solutions were often managed on
premises. On-premises solutions include hardware that can take
up a lot of space. Resources were needed to manage the systems
and software updates, upgrades, and patches needed to be
scheduled and installed manually by onsite staff.
Cloud-based, mobile-enabled hotel PMS platforms offer hotels
an innovative way to engage with guests while enabling hotels
to reduce IT costs and simplify their infrastructure. The systems
are administered by the vendor and are easy to use. Updates,
upgrades, and patches are done automatically, saving hotels
time and money.
The benefits of cloud-based hotel PMS solutions include:
Faster innovation With cloud-based hotel PMS, hotels can bring
new properties online more quickly. Each new release brings
new capabilities to help deliver great guest experiences,
improve operating efficiency, and increase employee
productivity.
Lower IT complexity and costs With cloud-based hotel PMS,
hotels can lower upfront capital expenditure on software and
hardware. By going above-property, hotels can also reduce IT
complexity and IT costs.
Increase in RevPAR and ADR With cloud-based hotel PMS,
hotels can effectively manage rates and allocation of rooms to
various distribution channels, helping to maximize occupancy,
rates, and revenue.
Enhanced customer lifetime value With cloud-based hotel PMS,

hotels get a single customer master with comprehensive guest
profiles that allow them to personalize and differentiate guest
experiences.
https://www.oracle.com/industries/hospitality/what-is-hotel-
pms.html?bcid=4571067312001
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9IOGy4gUS0
Making Process
Week 6 – Seminar: Use of Research to Justify the Marketing of
a Business
It is essential that management clearly understands what
information is and why it is important to take decisions based
on facts rather than assumptions.
It is also clear that those who do use information for decision
making also realise that they take better decisions as a result of
using data. The implications of this for management are:
Better knowledge of their markets and the customers they are

selling to;
More focused decisions and plans that are realistic to the
market;
Decisions that are based on more cost effective sales, marketing
and communications methods;
Decisions that assist the company to increase sales by ensuring
that customer needs are met and satisfied;
Acting on the research that is completed.
Information therefore is the key to taking good decisions as it
enhances the decision making process. However, to ensure this
is done effectively the meaning of both information and
decisions has to be evaluated.
WHAT IS INFORMATION:
The real definition of information, as given by the Oxford
Concise Dictionary, is:
informing;
knowledge;
news.
Information through the adoption of research techniques has a
fundamental informing role for management. It relates facts
about a product or market, which the manager may or may not
already know. Research always improves the knowledge of
management, as managers need to understand clearly what the
needs of the customers are and how these needs are always
changing. Research also provides plenty of news, as a well

designed research project will provide facts or facets of
situations not clear to management that it is not likely to have
known before.
Information, therefore, is something on which management
should depend for making good decisions. It is vital in the
decision making process, and so key that it is difficult to
understand how companies take decisions without information.
WHY TAKE DECISIONS WITH INFORMATION?
Researchers say that decision making cannot be done effectively
without a continuous flow of marketing information and
research - it is the trends that matter. Information on your
customers and how well you are marketing to them is:
a reassurance that you know who they are;
a source of feedback on how well you are servicing them;
key to knowing the changes in the market;
key to knowing how to make customers loyal in the longer term.
It is therefore the management responsibility to decide what
information is needed to make sure that the decision taken is
improved through the use of information.
Management needs to be able to decide:
What data or information is needed?
Which decisions will be influenced by this information?

How is the information to be collected?
How is the information to be analysed?
What expenditure is required to collect the information?
How can a decision be taken without the information?
Is a wrong decision likely to be taken as a result of not having
the information?
HOW DOES INFORMATION IMPROVE DECISIONS?
Information becomes vital to the decision making process when:
It is well prepared,
Used pragmatically,
Analysed and interpreted with 'market-led' implications.
It improves the decision making process by:
Reducing uncertainty,
Reducing the number of assumptions that a team of managers
might take.
Allowing a more systematic assessment of the facts about a
market, or product, or any decisions managers take.
So the keys to making good decisions therefore are:
to use information,
become more analytical in the way it is interpreted,
and become dependent on taking a decision when there are facts
to support it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Cg3_5Bfuw
Decision Making In Organisations

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO USE DATA AND RESEARCH
Customers' needs are always changing,
Competitors' activities are always changing,
The market environment in which business operates changes
because of external factors, such as political and economic
circumstances,
Managers have become more focused as companies operate
more efficient organisations, and they cannot keep an intimate
knowledge of their customers and their needs because of
pressure of time.
Data and research therefore has become more essential to help
to monitor change and provide managers with an 'early warning
system' on how to keep customers satisfied.
It is important for all managers in a company to adopt the
traditional marketing planning skills of developing a strategy,
testing and monitoring it, to find time to understand their
markets and customers better. It is effective to convene a
management team and review the following questions:
Where are we now?
Where do we want to go?
And how do we get there?
Answering these questions will give management the chance to
take a step back and identify whether it is meeting market and
customers needs effectively.
It will also assist in deciding on priorities for marketing and
communications activities in the future, and in getting them into

the context of change that is constant and affects all decisions.
Many managers find it difficult to conceptualize what data and
information is needed to help them answer the three traditional
questions, so it is important to review other questions to
develop the discussion.
The following are effective, provided each manager answers the
questions in relation to his or her own role in the company and
then participates in a review to consolidate the answers, so that
a company develops its consent view of what are the key
answers that need to be addressed:
What do we know about our markets and customers?
What do we want to know about our markets and customers?
What data and information are essential to assist us in the
decisions that we need to take to be successful?
What data and information are essential to assist us to know that
we are more successful than competitors and that we are
keeping our customers satisfied?
From Data to Wisdom Business MODEL
(The Importance of Data in Business)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw4P5wx1Bq0
Birn, R.J. (2004). Effective Use of Market Research: How to

Drive and Focus Better Business Decisions, London, Kogan
Page Ltd.
Kubo, H. and Ottaviano, T. (2016). Company and Industry
Research: Strategies and Resources, Business Expert Press, New
York.
Making Process
Week 8 – Seminar: Decision Making Models
Learning Outcomes:
At the end of this week, students should be able to:
▪ Understand the different models of decision making
▪ Appreciate the impact of ethics on the decision making
▪ Apply different scenarios of decision making models and
ethics
The fact that almost everything a manager does involves making
decisions doesn’t mean that decisions are always time-
consuming or complex. Most decision making is routine. For
instance, every day of the year you make a decision about what
to eat for dinner. It’s no big deal. You’ve made the decision
thousands of times before. It’s a pretty simple decision and can
usually be handled quickly. It’s the type of decision you almost
forget is a decision.

And managers also make dozens of these routine decisions
every day; for example, which employee will work what shift
next week, what information should be included in a report, or
how to resolve a customer’s complaint. Keep in mind that even
though a decision seems easy or has been faced by a manager a
number of times before, it still is a decision.
Let’s look at four perspectives on how managers make
decisions. Some of the decision making models are:
Rational
Bounded Rational
Intuition
Evidence-Based Management
Rational:
We assume that managers will use rational decision making;
that is, they’ll make logical and consistent choices. After all,
managers have all sorts of tools and techniques to help them be
rational decision makers.
What does it mean to be a “rational” decision maker?
rational decision maker would be fully objective and logical,
the problem faced would be clear and unambiguous,
and the decision maker would have a clear and specific goal and
know all possible alternatives and consequences,
making decisions rationally would consistently lead to selecting
the alternative that maximizes the likelihood of achieving that
goal.

These assumptions apply to any decision—personal or
managerial. However, for managerial decision making, we need
to add one additional assumption—decisions are made in the
best interests of the organization. These assumptions of
rationality aren’t very realistic and managers don’t always act
rationally, but the next concept can help explain how most
decisions get made in organizations.
Bounded Rational:
Despite the unrealistic assumptions, managers are expected to
be rational when making decisions. They understand that
“good” decision makers are supposed to do certain things and
exhibit good decision-making behaviours as they identify
problems, consider alternatives, gather information, and act
decisively but prudently.
When they do so, they show others that they’re competent and
that their decisions are the result of intelligent deliberation.
However, a more realistic approach to describing how managers
make decisions is the concept of bounded rationality, which
says that managers make decisions rationally, but are limited
(bounded) by their ability to process information. Because they
can’t possibly analyse all information on all alternatives,
managers satisfice, rather than maximize.
That is, they accept solutions that are “good enough.” They’re
being rational within the limits (bounds) of their ability to
process information.
Most decisions that managers make don’t fit the assumptions of
perfect rationality, so they satisfice.
However, keep in mind that their decision making is also likely
influenced by:
the organization’s culture,

internal politics,
power considerations,
and by a phenomenon called escalation of commitment
Escalation of commitment, is an increased commitment to a
previous decision despite evidence that it may have been wrong.
The Challenger space shuttle disaster is often used as an
example of escalation of commitment. Decision makers chose to
launch the shuttle that day even though the decision was
questioned by several individuals who believed it was a bad
one. Decision makers don’t want to admit that their initial
decision may have been flawed. Rather than search for new
alternatives, they simply increase their commitment to the
original solution.
Managers often use their intuition to help their decision making.
What is intuitive decision making?
It’s making decisions on the basis of experience, feelings, and
accumulated judgment.
How common is intuitive decision making? One survey found
that almost half of the executives surveyed “used intuition more
often than formal analysis to run their companies.”
Intuitive decision making can complement both rational and
bounded rational decision making. First of all, a manager who
has had experience with a similar type of problem or situation
often can act quickly with what appears to be limited
information because of that past experience. In addition, a
recent study found that individuals who experienced intense
feelings and emotions when making decisions actually achieved
higher decision-making performance, especially when they
understood their feelings as they were making decisions. T

Researchers studying managers’ use of intuitive decision
making have identified five different aspects of intuition,
Experience-based decisions:
Managers make decisions based on their past experiences
Subconscious mental processing:
Managers use data from subconscious mind to help them
make decisions
Values or ethics based decisions:
Managers make decisions based on ethical values or culture
Cognitive-based decisions:
Managers make decisions based on skills, knowledge, and
training
Affect-initiated decisions:
Managers make decisions based on feelings or emotions
Evidence-Based Management:
Suppose you were exhibiting some strange, puzzling physical
symptoms. In order to make the best decisions about proper
diagnosis and treatment, wouldn’t you want your doctor to base
her decisions on the best available evidence? Now suppose
you’re a manager faced with putting together an employee
recognition program. Wouldn’t you want those decisions also to
be based on the best available evidence?
Any decision-making process is likely to be enhanced through
the use of relevant and reliable evidence, whether it’s buying
someone a birthday present or wondering which new washing
machine to buy.
That’s the premise behind evidence-based management
(EBMgt), the “systematic use of the best available evidence to
improve management practice.”

The four essential elements of EBMgt are:
the decision maker’s expertise and judgment;
external evidence that’s been evaluated by the decision maker;
opinions, preferences, and values of those who have a stake in
the decision; and
relevant organizational (internal) factors such as context,
circumstances, and organizational members.
The strength or influence of each of these elements on a
decision will vary with each decision. Sometimes, the decision
maker’s intuition (judgment) might be given greater emphasis in
the decision;
other times it might be the opinions of stakeholders; and at
other times, it might be ethical considerations (organizational
context).
The key for managers is to recognize and understand the
mindful, conscious choice as to which elements are most
important and should be emphasized in making a decision.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOqi9NPTVoY
Ethical Decision Making
It's often clear what's right and wrong in a situation, but
occasionally, the lines can get a little blurry.
When you encounter so many diverse viewpoints on a daily
basis, your wrong can seem right to someone else, and vice
versa. In these instances, it's critical you and your team knows

how to make ethical decisions for the company.
Practicing ethical decision making can help you:
maintain an honest, supportive, and fair workplace culture,
but it's also necessary to ensure your company doesn't get into
legal trouble or face major losses down the road.
Ethical decision making is the process in which you aim to
make your decisions in line with a code of ethics.
To do so, you must seek out resources such as professional
guidelines and organizational policies, and rule out any
unethical solutions to your problem.
Making ethical decisions is easier said than done. Maybe your
co-worker lied to a client about a deal, but you personally like
this colleague and want to give him the benefit of the doubt. Or,
perhaps you're tempted to lie to your boss to avoid admitting
your team missed a deadline.
Whatever the case, it's critical you have a tangible set of steps
to follow the next time you need to apply your ethical decision
making skills at work.
Let's take a look at those steps now.
Ethical Decision Making Model
When you're making a major decision for your company, it can
be tempting to choose the easiest or most cost-effective course
of action -- even if that option isn't the best from an ethical
standpoint.
The PLUS Model, a set of questions designed to help you make
a decision from an ethical point of view, can ensure you're
doing the right thing.

The PLUS model is especially objective because it doesn't focus
on revenue or profit, but rather urges leaders to take a legal and
fair approach to a problem.
PLUS Model:
P = Policies and Procedures (Does this decision align with
company policies?)
L = Legal (Does this decision violate any laws or regulations?)
U = Universal (Is this decision in line with core values and
company culture? How does it relate to our organizational
values?)
S = Self (Does it meet my standards of fairness and honesty?)
Ethical Decision Making Examples
Let's take a look at a few ethical decision making examples, to
give you a better understanding of how to act if anything like
this happens to you.
1. Your team misses an important deadline, and you're tempted
to tell your boss you reached it anyway.
It might seem like a good idea to tell your boss your team is on-
track, and then work quietly to make sure that becomes a
reality, but in the long-run this will only hurt you and your
team. First, if you don't examine why your team missed the
deadline, you won't know how to fix the problem moving
forward. Additionally, your boss is meant to be a helpful
resource for you, and could help you combat the issue. Lying
could destroy your reputation as a leader and employee if your
team or boss finds out, and it will be difficult to then prove
your integrity. Figure out the guidelines or steps you need to
take, and follow those.

2. Your co-worker is giving her sister a major discount on your
product.
It makes sense -- family is important, after all. But it's not fair
or ethical if some of your customers are receiving discounts
simply because of who they are, and can even be seen as a form
of discrimination. If the public finds out you don't follow fair
rules when it comes to pricing and discounts, your entire
company's integrity is at risk. Either mention to your co-worker
that you don't feel it's fair, or report the issue to your team
leader.
3. You're close to finalizing a deal when you find out some of
the information you've provided the client isn't true. Your co-
worker takes a look at your slides and lets you know some of
the information is outdated and is no longer applicable to the
deal. Unfortunately, you could get into legal trouble for lying in
a contract, and you don't want to set a precedent of lying and
essentially stealing from clients to close deals. Be upfront and
own up to the misinformation, and then work with the client to
create a new deal. Ideally, the client will appreciate your
honesty. If not, at least you didn't win a deal through false
measures, which might've gotten you into bigger trouble down
the road.
Short Case Study: ETHICS DILEMMA
In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service employs
1.7 million people. It is the world’s largest publicly funded
health service. There are cases when employees have found
themselves “victimized” by management for one reason or
another. A prime example is that of a senior consultant, around
50 years old, working for a London hospital. She was suspended

on full pay for three years after raising concerns over staffing
levels in her clinic.
Shortly before her suspension, a major case of child abuse
implicating the hospital hit the headlines. As the hospital had
failed to pick up on these problems, the consultant became a
whistle-blower and exposed staffing concerns. Deeply
concerned, the hospital promptly offered her money with a
gagging clause as part of the agreement. She turned it down. It
took the support of hundreds of colleagues for her to eventually
return to work. Petitions that received great support from
former patients had added to the call. However, she would never
work for that hospital again. Since the incident, the consultant
has been instrumental in trying to bring about changes to the
support and protection of whistle-blowers in service.
Was the hospital’s decision to suspend the consultant correct?
Explain why or why not.
If you were the consultant’s line manager, how would you have
dealt with the situation?
Burke, L.A. and Miller, M.K. (1999). Taking the mystery out of
intuitive decision making, Academy of Management Executive,
Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 91-99.
Robbins, S and Coulter, M. (2017). Management, Global
Edition, Pearson.

Decisions Making: Strategic, Tactical and Operational
Decisions
1. Strategic decisions:
Strategic decisions are major choices of actions and influence
whole or a major part of business enterprise. They contribute
directly to the achievement of common goals of the enterprise.
They have long-term implications on the business en-terprise.
They may involve major departures from practices and
procedures being followed earlier. Generally, strategic decision
is unstructured and thus, a manager has to apply his business
judge-ment, evaluation and intuition into the definition of the
problem. These decisions are based on partial knowledge of the
environmen-tal factors which are uncertain and dynamic. Such
decisions are taken at the higher level of management.
2. Tactical decisions:
These decisions relate to the implementation of strategic
decisions. They are directed towards developing divi-sional
plans, structuring workflows, establishing distribution
chan-nels, acquisition of resources such as men, materials and
money. These decisions are taken at the middle level of
management.
3. Operational decisions:
These decisions relate to day-to-day op-erations of the
enterprise. They have a short-term horizon as they are taken
repetitively. These decisions are based on facts regarding the
events and do not require much of business judge-ment.
Operational decisions are taken at lower levels of man-agement.
As the information is needed for helping the manager to take

rational, well informed decisions, information systems need to
fo-cus on the process of managerial decision making.
A Framework for Ethical Decision Making
*
Ethical DecisionEthical Decision-Making Process is the
processes of choosing the best alternative for achieving the best
results or outcomes compliance with individual and social
values, moral, and regulations.
Making Ethical Decisions Making good ethical decisions to
solve Ethical Dilemma requires a trained sensitivity to ethical
issues and a practiced method for exploring the ethical aspects
of a decision. Having a method for ethical decision making is
absolutely essential. Ethical decision should be based on ethical
principles and codes rather than on emotions, thoughts, fixed
policies.
Ethical DilemmaEthical dilemma: is a situation with
uncertainty about what is right to do from a moral or ethical

perspective.For example, the manager of a company may be put
in a position in which he must choose between the interests of
his employees and his investors. Give more profits or increase
the salary?
*
Ethical Dilemma DefinedExample 2 :A new technology is being
launched which is good for the company as well as the
customers. But, if this is brought into use, a lesser man-power is
required for the organization. The entrepreneur is now in an
ethical dilemma whether he wants to better his clients with good
services or be loyal to his employees who have helped the
company grow. The unpleasantness of the situation arises when
neither the clients nor the employees deserve to suffer and it is
the entrepreneur’s call to take.
The Framework OverviewStep One: Describe the problemStep
Two: Determine whether there is an ethical issue or an ethical
dilemmaStep Three: Identify and rank the key values and
principlesStep Four: Gather your informationStep Five:
Review any applicable Code of EthicsStep Six: Determine the
optionsStep Seven: Select a course of actionStep Eight: Put
your plan into action.Step Nine: Evaluate the results.
Step One: Describe the ProblemYou must first describe the
problem and ensure that it’s actually a moral dilemma that

needs to follow an ethical model.Consider the nature of the
problem and any signs of the problem and ensure that you’re
attempting to solve the issue and not just it’s
signsCircumstances affect the problem definition (for whom
does the problem exist? What is the surroundings?)
Step Two: Determine Whether There Is an Ethical
DilemmaDilemma becomes ethical when the good or bad
options seem to have a moral component
(e.g. privacy vs. avoidance of harm,
freedom vs. safety).Terms of an ethical dilemma must be ethical
in nature, not legal. If something is a law, you then have the
ethical choice to follow the law or not.
Step Three: Identify and Rank the Key Values and
PrinciplesWhat reasons can you provide for prioritizing one
competing value over another?Understand that a decision to a
dilemma which goes against an individual’s personal set of
values has very little chance of success.
Step Four: Gather Your InformationDo you have all the known
facts?Do you understand the applicable laws or legalities?Do
you have all relevant policies available to review?Are you clear
about the individual’s views and personal values?
* Don’t hesitate to seek out consultation.
Step Five: Review Any Applicable Code of EthicsLook for the
following:

-- mission statement
-- values base of the organization
-- ethical principles to guide practice
-- ethical standardsCodes can be revised(‫)لدعت‬ or updated as
needed
Step Six: Determine the OptionsList all possible actionable
optionsWeigh the cost/benefits of each optionSeek out
additional points of view
Step Seven: Select a Course of Action
Remove the least desirable option.
Remove any which you can not put into action.
Remove any options which break the values systems of those
affected.
Recognize that your final choice will be impacted by your
personal values.
Step Eight: Put Your Plan Into ActionThink about the outcomes
with a sense that you have truly approached this ethical
dilemma with the best of intentions and to the best of your
ability.
Step Nine: Evaluate The ResultsEvaluate the cost for each
person involved (client, family members, co-workers, agency,
etc.)Consider submitting your most difficult cases to an ethics
review board for feedback.

ReferencesSavur, S., & Sandhu, Sukhbir, editor.
(2017). Responsible leadership and ethical decision-
making(Research in ethical issues in organizations ; Volume
17).
By Dr Joanna Voulgaropoulou
DECISION-MAKING
TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
DECISION-MAKING
TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
• While the basic principles might be
the same, there are dozens of
different techniques and tools that
can be used when trying to make a
decision.
• Here are some of the more popular
options, many of which use graphs,
models or charts.
• You may want to use a combination
of these techniques to arrive at your
final decisions.
T-Chart Decision tree

Multivoting Pareto analysis
Cost-benefit
analysis
Conjoint
analysis
SWOT
Analysis
PEST
Analysis
Most Popular Models:
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6147-decision-tree.html
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6154-pareto-analysis.html
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/6161-conjoint-
analysis.html
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/4245-swot-analysis.html
https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5512-pest-analysis-
definition-examples-templates.html
WHAT IS A DECISION
MATRIX? DEFINITION
AND EXAMPLES
Decision matrices can help you
select the best option,
But also in prioritizing tasks,
problem-solving or even

crafting arguments to defend a
decision you've already made.
1. List your decision
alternatives as rows, and
the relevant factors
affecting the decisions –
such as cost, ease and
effectiveness – as the
columns.
1
2. Then, establish a
ratings scale to assess
the value of each
alternative/factor
combination. Be sure
that the rankings are
consistent.
2
For example, if you're
looking at pain points,
be sure each issue is
worded so it gets more
points the worse it is.
3
Next, multiply your original ratings by the

weighted rankings to get a score.
All the factors under each option should
then be added up.
The option that scores the highest is the
winning choice or the first item to work
on.
Here are a few websites that have
templates:
• Launch Excel
• MindTools
• iSixSigma
3.
http://www.launchexcel.com/resources/decision-
matrix/decision-matrix-download-page/
http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_03.htm
http://www.isixsigma.com/tools-
templates/templates/prioritization-matrix-made-easier-template/
KEY POINTS
Decision Matrix Analysis helps you to
decide between several options, where
you need to take many different factors
into account.
To use the tool, lay out your options as rows on a table.
Set up the columns to show the factors you need to
consider. Score each choice for each factor using
numbers from 0 (poor) to 5 (very good), and then
allocate weights to show the importance of each of
these factors.

Multiply each score by the weight of the factor, to
show its contribution to the overall selection.
Finally add up the total scores for each option.
The highest scoring option will be the best
option.
NOTE:
Decision Matrix Analysis is the simplest form of
Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA),
also known as Multiple Criteria Decision Aid or
Multiple Criteria Decision Management
(MCDM). Sophisticated MCDA can involve
highly complex modeling of different potential
scenarios, using advanced mathematics.
A lot of business decision making, however, is
based on approximate or subjective data. Where
this is the case, Decision Matrix Analysis may be
all that’s needed.
DECISION MATRIX
ANALYSIS:
HOW TO MAKE A
GOOD DECISION
WHEN
COMPARING
MANY DIFFERENT

FACTORS
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO7xJ1sTyPI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO7xJ1sTyPI
REFERENCES:
• Pugh, S. (1981). Concept Selection: A Method
That Works. In: Hubka, V. (ed.), 'Review of
Design Methodology.
• Proceedings International Conference on
Engineering Design, March 1981, Rome,'
Zürich: Heurista. p.497-506.
Data Driven Decision Making
Purpose
l Provide guidelines for using data for team
planning
l Provide guidelines for using data for on-
going problem solving
l Apply guidelines to examples

Improving Decision Making
From Problem
Solution
To Problem Problem Solving

206LON Business Management and Decision Ma.docx

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