1. Managing Decision Making: Skill-Building Exercise Exercise Overview Technical skills are the skills necessary to accomplish or understand the specific kind of work being done in an organization. Decision- making skills, meanwhile, refer to the manager's ability to correctly recognize and define problems and opportunities and to then select an appropriate course of action to solve problems and capitalize on opportunities. This exercise will enable you to practice your technical skills to obtain Information for making a decision. It will also help you develop Insights into various aspects of decision making Exercise Background Assume that you are a business owner seeking a location for a new factory in the past few years you have seen a steady increase in international sales, and you believe there is substantial potential for new revenue growth from exports to China and other Asian markets. Your production facilities are running at full capacity, however, so you need to increase production capacity. (of course, you could simply maintain your current capacity and revenues, but you are confident that there are strong opportunities for growth.) The business currently has three factories and has about $60 million in annual revenues. Your company makes products that are relatively clean"-that is, they do not pollute the environment, nor do they produce any dangerous waste products. Most of your workforce consists of skilled or sem skilled workers who are provided with good benefits and market level compensation. Thus, most communities would welcome your plant, You are seeking a place that has a stable and well-educated workforce, as well as ample affordable housing, access to quality health care, reasonable lifestyle amenities, and a good educational system. Based on information you gathered and used when you built your last factory 10 years ago, you have narrowed your choice to the following towns: 1. Santa Cruz, California 2. Madison, Wisconsin 3. Manhattan, Kansas 4. College Station, Texas 5. Amherst, Massachusetts 6. Athens, Georgia Exercise Task with this background information as context, do the following: 1. Use the Internet to research each of these cities. 2. Rank-order the cities on the basis of the criteria noted. 3. Select the best city for your nevy factory. Completing this activity will help you hone your technical skills, especially as they relate to using the internet to gather pertinent information to use as a basis for making decisions There is no one best answer from among the choices listed. However, some of the options listed are better than others, given the criteria identified. Therefore, you should be able to defend your choice using the information gathered. Is the decision you are making a programmed or nonprogrammed decision? Neither Nonprogrammed Programmed The scenario Indicated that you want to select the site for your new factory from among six cities, which stage of the rational decision-making process does this statement reflect? Implementing the chosen alternative Evaluating alternatives Identifying alternatives Recognizing and defining the decision situation Selecting the best alternative Suppose that you have narrowed the list of options to three: Manhattan, Kansas, College Station, Texas, and Athens, Georgia. Assume that the objective data for these three communities that relate to your project are all essentially the same. Your oldest child will be going to college in a couple of years and has indicated a strong interest in attending the University of Georgia. As a result you decide to build the new factory in Athens, Georgla, because then it will be easier for you to regularly visit both the new factory and your child on the same trip. Which behavioral aspect of decision making does this most closely Illustrate? Intuition Ethics Political forces Risk propensity Bounded rationality