Evaluate the chapters you have just read. What more do you think you need to know on this subject, or what aspects of this subject are not clear to you? How does it relate to your personal and professional lives?

The purpose of this exercise is to provide an opportunity to practice analyzing a decision situation and selecting an appropriate procedure. Read each decision case carefully and use the decision rules from the Normative Decision Model to guide your analysis of the situation. The order of priority for the three criteria is as follows: (1) quality, (2) acceptance, (3) time. In other words, after applying the guidelines to eliminate any decision procedure that risks quality and acceptance, then select the fastest remaining procedure. Only the following three decision procedures should be considered.Autocratic Decision: the leader makes the decision alone without asking subordinates (or group members) for their ideas, suggestions, or preferences.Consultation: the leader explains the decision problem to subordinates (or group members), asks them for their ideas and suggestions, and then makes the decision after careful consideration of their inputs.Group Decision: the leader meets with subordinates (or group members) to discuss the problem and reach a joint decision; the leader runs the meeting but has no more influence over the final decision than any other group member.

Incident 1You are a production manager and one of your responsibilities is to order the materials used by your subordinates in production jobs. Extensive stockpiling of materials is not feasible, and having idle workers due to lack of materials is costly. Based on past records, you have been able to determine the materials subordinates will need a few weeks in advance with considerable accuracy. The purchase orders are executed by the Purchasing Office, not by your subordinates. How would you make material procurement decisions?___Autocratic Decision___Consultation___Group DecisionIncident 2You are the Vice-President for Production in a small manufacturing company. Your plant is working close to capacity to fill current orders. Now you have just been offered a contract to manufacture components for a new customer. If the customer is pleased with the way you handle this order, additional orders are likely and they could become one of the company's largest clients. You are confident that your production supervisors can handle the job, but it would impose a heavy burden on them in terms of rescheduling production, hiring extra workers, and working extra hours. How would you decide whether to accept the new contract?___Autocratic Decision___Consultation___Group DecisionIncident 3You have been appointed the chairperson of a committee formed to coordinate the interdependent activities of several departments in the company. Coordination problems have interfered with the flow of work, causing bottlenecks, delays, and wasted effort. The coordination problems are complex, and solving them requires knowledge of on-going events in the different departments. Even though you are the designated chairperson, you have no formal authority over the other members, who are not your subordinates. You depend on committee members to return to their respective departments and implement the decisions made by the committee. You are glad that most members appear to be sincerely interested in improving coordination among departments.___Autocratic Decision___Consultation___Group DecisionIncident 4.You are a store manager in a large chain of retail stores. The manager of another store in town has been caught short handed, and your boss, the regional manager has asked you to loan the other store one of your employees for a few days. You know the qualifications of your employees and there are several who could do the work in the other store. It would be the same kind of work they are doing now. The work schedule in your store could be adjusted to allow any of the employees to be away for a few days. It is now evening, and the employee to be selected must be notified soon so that he or she will report to the other store tomorrow. How would you decide which person to send?___Autocratic Decision___Consultation___Group DecisionIncident 5.You are the manager of a production facility with five operating departments. The department managers are your immediate subordinates. The budget expenses for your facility have just been reduced, without any reduction in workload. Now you have to decide how much to cut each department's budget. None of the department managers wants to suffer a budget cut, and each believes that his department's activities should have the highest priority. You find it difficult to evaluate how budget cuts would affect each department's capacity to do its work. This evaluation requires more detailed information about the current operations of each department. How would you decide where to make the budget cuts?___Autocratic Decision___Consultation___Group DecisionIncident 6.You are the manager of six office workers who have identical jobs. The employees are all highly competent. It is time to set up the vacation schedule for the summer. It is company policy that only one worker can be on vacation at any given time. Each employee gets two weeks of vacation, but the vacation days do not have to be taken together. Four of the workers have expressed a strong desire to have their vacation in June. You do not know all the details, but are aware that some of the employees have special trips or important family events in June. Your subordinates are eager to find out the vacation schedule so they can make their plans. How should this decision be made?___Autocratic Decision___Consultation___Group Decision