Strategic Decision Making: A Best Practice Blueprint

ISBN-13: 9780471486992 / Angielski / Miękka / 2001 / 160 str.

George Wright; Digby Jones

Opis

Good decision making is crucial to good management and successful strategic planning. Sadly the decision making capabilities within organisations are often poor. Using a fascinating and very readable combination of psychological theory, pencil-and-paper thought problems, and material from contemporary media, George Wright demonstrates why high-profile strategic disasters occur and how to prevent your own organisation from making similar mistakes. Case studies include Marks & Spencer, Dyson, Baring's Bank and the Millennium Dome.

Recenzje

"..this series has much to commend it..." (Modern Management, February 2002) 

" a fascinating and readable combination of psychological theory, paper and pencil thought problems and quotations from contemporary media " (Productivity Digest, May 2002)

Spis treści

Series Foreword by Digby Jones.

About the Author.

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

Challenging Routines.

Decision Making in Management Teams.

Overcoming Overconfidence.

How to Think with Scenarios.

Dealing with Decision Dilemmas.

Expectation and Decision Making.

How to Make Trade–offs.

Harnessing the Minds of Managers.

Notes.

Appendix A.

Appendix B.

Appendix C.

Index.

O autorze

George Wright has held Faculty positions at LBS and Leeds Business School, and is currently at Strathclyde Graduate School of Business, where he consults to major blue–chip clients such as Philips and IBM. He has conducted extensive research into the role of judgement in forecasting and decision making, with particular emphasis on the simplification strategies of managers which lead to poor decisions.
He has published both academic and trade books on forecasting and decision making, and contributed to various journals within the field. He founded the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making with Wiley in 1988 and is Associate Editor of the Wiley journal Journal of Forecasting and the journal International Journal of Forecasting.

Blurb

∗ Why are large organisations, including household names, sometimes accused of ′losing the plot′ in their business strategy?

∗ Why do organisations fail to exploit new opportunities such as that presented by Dyson′s innovative vacuum cleaner design?

∗ Why were funds poured into the UK Dome and the City of London Taurus computer project when it was clear that ′good money′ was following ′bad′?
The answers will surprise you. Using psychological theory, paper and pencil ′thought problems′, and well–chosen quotations from newspaper articles written at the time, the book demonstrates and explains the causes of these ′strategic blunders′. It also shows how to recognise and avoid your own organisation making the same mistakes.

Providing clear guidance with a number of tried and tested methods and techniques, the author shows how organisational decision making can be improved by avoiding delaying tactics and a ′blame culture′ and how scenario planning can be used to overcome management overconfidence in predicting the future.