What is an example of an unstructured decision?

20 Feb

There are three types of decisions made by different sections of the organization. Information systems are used to help with these decisions.

What is an example of an unstructured decision?

  • Unstructured decisions: These decisions require judgement, evaluation and insight to solve the problem. Unstructured means “decision processes that have not been encountered in quite the same form and for which no predetermined and explicit set of ordered responses exists in the organization”.  (Mintzberg, et al., 1976, 246)  These decisions are seen as novel, important and non routine. There is no well understood procedure for making them. An example of an unstructured decision that management may face could be deciding if the company should enter into a new market or would it be more beneficial for them to stay in just their current market. Information systems help to make such decisions. 
  • Semistructured decisions: these decisions have elements of both structured and semi structured decisions. Only part of the problem has a clear-cut answer provided by accepted procedure. A semi structured decision is one which is partially programmable but still requires human judgement. There are three dimensions to a semi structured decision:

1. Degree of decision-making skill required.

2. Degree of problem complexity

3. Number of criteria considered

  • Structured decisions:means having processes in place to handle a situation.  The implication is that structured problems are recurring ones.  Because they recur, we put processes and procedures in place to handle them. These decisions are repetitive and routine. They involve definite procedures for answering. Therefore they don’t need to be treated as new each time the decision has to be made. A good example of a structured decision would be the hiring process in a company. its important to create structure around repetitive situations so that a lot of time is not spent on very minor decisions.

References:

http.www.cathaldoyle.com

http.www.stewart13.com/2011/06/07decision-making-structured-verses-unstructured

What is an example of an unstructured decision?

Are you taking this time to come up with new skills? A side hustle? Or are you waiting for your CEO/ senior management to instruct you on what to do next? 

Most of the internet memes/posts right now are telling people that its ok to just rest and wait for the crisis to be over. But do you know when it's going to be over? We don't and if we do not act now, we may literally DIE. 

The Gorry and Scott Morton decision framework shows that junior management can only resort to structured decisions, middle management uses semi-structured decision making and only senior management can come up with unstructured decisions. 

But what if you break through the decision-making hierarchy and come out with your own unstructured decision? Organizations need to venture into new opportunities NOW before they get entangled in the economic recession. I have seen many organizations currently going into fresh food supply, virtual sessions and so on. Air Asia even came out with a new e-commerce platform. Now, that is unstructured decision making! 

It does not matter what title you hold or which part of the strata you belong to, come out with your ideas and make decisions fast to improve any business or organization you're part of. 

Background reading on the Gorry and Scott Morton decision framework:

Unstructured decisions: These decisions require judgment, evaluation, and insight to solve the problem. Unstructured means “decision processes that have not been encountered in quite the same form and for which no predetermined and explicit set of ordered responses exists in the organization”.

Semistructured decisions: These decisions have elements of both structured and semi-structured decisions. Only part of the problem has a clear-cut answer provided by an accepted procedure. A semi-structured decision is one that is partially programmable but still requires human judgment. 

Structured decisions: Means having processes in place to handle a situation. These decisions are repetitive and routine. 

Side note: Hey guys, in this volatile time, I thought of writing some of my thoughts and share what I have learned as an entrepreneur and MBA student. 

#Hanaawrites #PStips #Entrepreneurship #keephustling

Reference:

Kirs, P.J., Sanders, G.L., Cerveny, R.P. and Robey, D., 1989. An experimental validation of the Gorry and Scott Morton framework. MiS Quarterly, pp.183-197.

Decision making is cognitive process of selecting cause of action to achieve a specific goal. we have alternative choice to solve one problems we have to choice one route so we take decision.

if we have no information we take decision on other hand set of procedure help to take decision we take decision in a logical way. after a situational analysis we take decision i.e increase production if flows of customer is high in market. there are different types of problems we have different approaches to solve problems.

Three types of decisions:

There are three types of decisions made by different sections of the organization. Information systems are used to help with these decisions.

What is an example of an unstructured decision?

  • senior management decide exit from market.
  • middle management marketing plane
  • operational management offers credit to customers

 has multi-pal solution. These decisions require judgement, evaluation and insight to solve the problem. Unstructured means “decision processes that have not been encountered in quite the same form and for which no predetermined and explicit set of ordered responses exists in the organization These decisions are seen as novel, important and non routine. There is no well understood procedure for making them.

 An example of an unstructured decision that management may face could be deciding if the company should enter into a new market or would it be more beneficial for them to stay in just their current market. Information systems help to make such decisions. 

Semi-structured decisions:

 these decisions have elements of both structured and semi structured decisions. Only part of the problem has a clear-cut answer provided by accepted procedure. A semi structured decision is one which is partially programmable but still requires human judgement. There are three dimensions to a semi structured decision:

1. Degree of decision-making skill required.

2. Degree of problem complexity

3. Number of criteria considered

procedure/parameters  must be define.  means having processes in place to handle a situation.  The implication is that structured problems are recurring ones.  Because they recur, we put processes and procedures in place to handle them. These decisions are repetitive and routine. They involve definite procedures for answering. Therefore they don’t need to be treated as new each time the decision has to be made. A good example of a structured decision would be the hiring process in a company. its important to create structure around repetitive situations so that a lot of time is not spent on very minor decisions.

1. no alarm to awake up  structural

2. alarm close by finger semi structural.

3. alarm and you must awake up structural decision

school/bank timing   structural decision



 unstructured organization--------------->  structured organization


There are many types of decision making and these can be easily categorized into the following 4 groups:

  • Rational(عقلی)
  • Intuitive(فطری - فطرت کے مطابق)
  • Combinations
  • Satisficing
  • Decision Support Systems
  • Recognition primed decision making

(Well spotted! I said 4 and there are 5 - read on for the reason why) Let's consider these in more detail.

Rational decision making is the commonest of the types of decision making that is taught and learned when people decide that they want to improve their decision making. These are logical, sequential models where the emphasis is on listing many potential options and then working out which is the best. Often the pros and cons (positive and negative arguments) of each option are also listed and scored in order of importance.

The rational aspect indicates that there is considerable reasoning and thinking done in order to select the optimum choice. Because we put such a heavy emphasis on thinking and getting it right in our society, there are many of these models and they are very popular. People like to know what the steps are and many of these models have steps that are done in order.

People would love to know what the future holds, which makes these models popular. Because the reasoning and rationale behind the various steps is that if you do x, then y should happen. However, most people have personal experience that the world usually doesn't work that way!

The second of the types of decision making are the intuitive models. The idea here is that there may be absolutely no reason or logic to the decision making process. Instead, there is an inner knowing, or intuition, or some kind of sense of what the right thing to do is.

And there are probably as many intuitive types of decision making as there are people. People can feel it in their heart, or in their bones, or in their gut and so on. There are also a variety of ways for people to receive information, either in pictures or words or voices.

People talk about extra sensory perception as well. However, they are still actually picking up the information through their five senses. Clair sentience is where people feel things, clair audience is hearing things and clairvoyance is seeing things.

And of course we have phrases such as 'I smell a rat', ' it smells fishy' and 'I can taste success ahead'.

Other types of decision making in the intuitive category might include tossing a coin, throwing dice, tarot cards, astrology, and so on.

Decision wheels are usually more humorous than intuitive but they do have a serious application.

Many decisions are actually a result of combinations of rational and intuitive processes. This can be deliberate where a person combines aspects of both, or it can occur unwittingly.

For example, a person has listed the pros and cons of the options, assigned numerical values and added them all up. (The rational part.) But the end result is not really satisfactory, they are uneasy somehow (the intuitive part), so they change the parameters, and the numbers add up differently. This new result is more 'satisfactory', so they go with that one.

Instead of evaluating all the possible options and choosing the best, satisficing is where we pick the first one that will give us the result. We choose an option that is 'good enough', one that satisfies our needs and sacrifices other potentially better options. Hence, satisfice.

Because computers can process large amounts of data quickly, they were soon put to use to help make decisions. Decision Support Systems range from a simple spreadsheet to organize information graphically, to very complex programs organizing info in international companies and including artificial intelligence that can suggest alternative options and solutions.

There are various types of decision making systems depending on how many people are involved, the form of the information being processed, what type of result is required, and so on.

There are pros and cons to using computers in this way, and of course, the computer is only as good as the information that it is processing. Which means that it still comes down to the humans...!

Gary Klein has spent considerable time studying human decision making and his results are very interesting. He believes that we make 90 to 95% of our decisions in a pattern recognition way. He suggests that what we actually do is gather information from our environment in relation to the decision we want to make. We then pick an option that we think will work. We rehearse it mentallyand if we still think it will work, we go ahead.

If it does not work mentally, we choose another option and run that through in our head instead. If that seems to work, we go with that one. We pick scenarios one by one, mentally check them out, and as soon as we find one that works, we choose it.


He also points out that as we get more experience, we can recognise more patterns, and we make better choices more quickly