Management Under Uncertainly Essay Example for Free

Management Under Uncertainly Essay I had been in Target as a temporary worker and one decision made by the manager left a deep impression on me. As one of the largest retail stores in Australia, Target can be found in the shopping centre of most area. The store I had worked is located in Leichhardt which had the expectancy was achieving a sales budget of $ 50,000 per day, and then the net profit would reach $6000. In order to make the expectation into reality, the manager of Target Leichhardt store from the point of view of cost savings decided to cut the shifts of employees. Originally, one shift had four cashiers, but now reduced to two cashiers. In addition, the manger made a decision to no longer use customer greeters. In Target store, the duty of greeter is not only greet customers into the store, but also check the bags of customers to avoid theft when they leave. The manager decided to reduce shift because he found this is a kind of waste when the store is not busy. On the other hand, he thought the customer greeter looks like a decoration because the phenomenon of pilferage was rarely. Although the manager made the adjustments, the result was still not satisfied and the outcome was the store has not achieved the budget. These decisions caused complaint from a lot of customers about the long queue when they went to the checkout. I had seen some customers drop off the commodities which they had selected because they do not like to wait for a long time. Beyond that, the two operators always feel tired and unfair when the store is very busy. Once they feel bored, they will not have enough energy and passion to serve customers. Furthermore, no longer use greeter also caused some negative effects. For example, tally clerk found that small and precious items had been lost regularly. Obviously, there were customers in the store for stealing and the action of theft reduced the budget seriously. Analysis of the Decision Teale, Dispenza, Flynn, Currie (2003) pointed out that the bounded rational decision making is refer to there are many options, but the decision maker only consider some of these, or from the long term, that is not a best decision but the most suitable for the current situation. Here is an example, a lady fell down along the road and break her stiletto heel, and then she quickly goes into a cheap shoe store and bought a pair of lip-flops that she had never worn before. If it is in normal circumstances, the lady will buy a pair of shoes that she likes at ordinary times, but now she is in a hurry and can not wear the shoes with broken heels. So, buy a pair of shoes that does not like usually become an appropriate choice. This can be called â€Å"satisfying†. People in most cases do decision like this, because sometimes we do not consider all the possibilities in order to save time (Campling, Poole, Wiesner, Ang, Chan, Tan Schermerhorn, 2008). Decision-makers always pick up the most useful one. In the Target Leichhardt store, because the manager chose the solution to reduce the costs in a short time, the decision can be defined as Satisfying. The decision of this store manager made just embodies the people’s bounded rationality in decision making process. The managers thought the store can increase budget by cutting costs. However, queuing for a long time can make customers have bad impression on the store. Finally, people thought for long lines when they mention this store, then they refuse to go to the store shopping instinctively. People should consider three processes that bounded rationality usually involve in. hey are simple search, simple stopping and simple decision rules. These three rules are also referred to as â€Å"heuristics†, it is used to describe â€Å"how normal people make decisions without calculating utilities and probabilities† (Gigerenzer Todd, 2012). In this case, the manager made decision without calculating the chance of various results by using the optimal and maximizing outcome. . In this situation, the manager didn’t use the optimal or maximizing outcome to calculate the probability of outcome occurring, he didn’t use the utility to calculate the expected happiness. There are many factors that can cause bounded rationality, such as emotion, knowledge and culture. According to Teale et al (2003), bounded rationality can also be interpreted as non-rational decisions. This is because people have limited knowledge level and lack of training. The lack of knowledge and training make people with narrow horizons, and then can not take a panoramic view of the situation and do not have a long-term view. In this Target store, the manager did not investigate and understand the situation of the store from all aspects carefully; it also can say he was lack of practical experience in management of decision making. His decision can only satisfy the short-term interest if it goes well. However, it turns out he did not achieve the short-term goals. In terms of the long time interest, invoice for a long time and occasionally steal phenomenon caused bad effect on the company’s image. On the other hand, decision-maker do not communicate smoothly and actively with others can also affect the decision making (McKee, 2010). According to my observation, the manager lack basic understanding of the store and he seldom communicated with employees and customers. Sometimes, he just organized the regular meeting, and the aim of meeting is to decorate task without exchange views with others. When someone makes decision by himself without communicate with others, bounded rationality can get a higher frequency of occurrence. Lacks of communication not only lead to make decision unwise, because the decision maker is likely to be emotional to make a decision, but also make the decision maker overconfidence. In real life, we meet some people who always think they are right (Hanson, Hitt, Ireland Hoskisson, 2011). Beyond that, environment can cause bounded rationality. Today’s general environment is complicated and changefully, people can obtain information from various channels and ways. Not all information is appropriate, sometimes wrong information mislead decision maker to make an irrational decision. In this case, the general environment is the customers and sales performance are different and the manager eager to prove his ability. So he made a non rational decision and this decision does not have any benefit for a long term operation. Reflection Mckee (2010) show us The Eight Stage Decision Making Process Model. If I were the manager in this case, I would use the above mentioned model to help me to make a rational decision. First of all, I would collect all possible information about the sale budget and net profit for five years before. For example, check the financial annual report, the daily turnover and the net profit report. Form these reports, I could analyze and assess which part of work we need to adjust and improve. Our goal is to increase earnings; we can start this goal from attracting more customers rather than reduce shifts and layoff greeters. There are many ways to attract potential customers and make them become returned customers at the same time. One effective way is issue voucher; we can offer a five dollar voucher when the customers purchase more than 50 dollars. By that analogy, we can give ten dollar voucher when the customers purchase more than 100 dollars. In this way, we can ensure customers keep coming. Another way to attract customers is to do some promotions, such as buy three same items for two items price. When I use The Eight Stage Decision Making Process Model to make a decision, I would consider more on one of the elements that is to list alternatives (Mckee, 2010). In this case, arrange employees to the most suitable area according to their own ability and personality is an alternative decision. For instance, a employee with personality of patience and enthusiasm, I would arrange he to be a customer assistance. Put myself in customer’s position, I hope to get a better shopping guide and help. Moreover, Tolbert and Hall (2008) pointed out that the more person involve the decision process, the decision is more rational. Due to the feasibility of this theory, I would be honest to analyze the whole store operating condition and the goals to other managers and employees. Then, I will encourage them to actively participate in discussion and give advices. If I were the manager I would continue to use customer greeters. In order to make them not as decoration, I will arrange them some to do things to attract customers. For example, greeters can pass flyers to passers so that they have a better concept about what product will have a discount in which day. The following step we need to carry out decision, along with this step there may have some obstacles impede our progress. But, these are not serious problems, as long as we step by step; we are able to make sensible decisions (Kramar, Bartram, De Cieri, Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart Wright, 2011). This style of decision making can be described as the rational model. Only managers like a link, fasten all the employees together to make the decision, this decision can be good for long-term development of an organization.