Read the definition of business decision-making and discuss it in pairs.

Business decision-making - the thought process of selecting a logical choice from the available options. When trying to make a good decision, a person must weight the positives and negatives of each option, and consider all the alternatives. For effective decision-making, a person must be able to forecast the outcome of each option as well, and based on all these items, determine which option is the best for that particular situation. [1]

2. What styles of business decision-making do you know? Complete the test [2] and identify what your decision-making style is.

What’s Your Decision-Making Style?

1. Your boss asks you to develop a proposal to launch a new product. You:

A. Dig up data to generate some initial ideas, talk with your colleagues and write the proposal.

B. Draft the proposal, add some supporting charts and get it to the boss as soon as possible.

C. Find your group's last product launch proposal, take a look at recent data and model the new proposal on the old one.

2. Reviewing recent sales figures, you notice a spike in a division that's been struggling. You:

A. Look up some data, run some numbers and make a couple of calls to figure out why sales are up.

B. Are suspicious about the increase.

C. Laud the division manager for turning things around.

3. You're leading the search for a new team member and must develop guidelines for evaluating candidates. You:

A. Pull the résumés of past top performers to help you define an ideal candidate profile.

B. Talk to several people you think might be interested in the job and try to understand what their profiles would look like.

C. Check the criteria previously used to fill similar positions.

4. You're evaluating options for a product redesign, and your market research is inconclusive. You:

A. Choose the option you think your management team is most likely to make work.

B. Rely on your best sense of what your customers will like.

C. Commission more market research before making a decision.

5. Your boss asks you to prepare the department budget for the coming year. You:

A. Review recent department budget trends and meet with team leaders to learn whether forecasts need to be adjusted for changing conditions.

B. Ask your team leaders to provide their budget expectations and aggregate the results.

C. Project the budget on the basis of an extensive analysis of historical trends.

Interpreting the results

If most of your answers are:

* A- You're an informed skeptic.

* B- You're a visceral decision maker.

* C- You're an unquestioning empiricist.

Vocabulary

These are the terms for you to learn.

A. Make sentences with them.

B. Translate them.

1. decision-making	2. bounded rationality	3. rational decision making	4. intuitive decision making
4.programmed decision	6.procedure	7. rule	8. policy
9. unstructured problems	10. non programmed decisions	11. conditions of certainty	12. risk
13. conditions of uncertainty	14. conditions of risk	15. brainstorming	16. linear thinking
17. systems thinking	18. problem solver	19. problem seeker	20. problem avoider
21. situation analysis	22. crisis management	23. learning organization	24. operational decisions
25. performance standards	26. pilot testing	27. strategic decision	28. tactical decision
29. objective	30. game theory	31. decision	32. decision theory
33. decision mode	34. concept	35. decision making process

2. Match terms 1- 10 with definitions a- j: