Developed from the authors’ longstanding course on decision and risk analysis, Value-Added Decision Making for Managers explores the important interaction between decisions and management action and clarifies the barriers to rational decision making. The authors analyze strengths and weaknesses of the best alternatives, enabling decision makers to improve on these alternatives by adding value and reducing risk.
The core of the text addresses decisions that involve selecting the best alternative from diverse choices. The decisions include buying a car, picking a supplier or home contractor, selecting a technology, picking a location for a manufacturing plant or sports stadium, hiring an employee or selecting among job offers, deciding on the size of a sales force, making a late design change, and sourcing to emerging markets. The book also covers more complex decisions arising in negotiations, strategy, and ethics that involve multiple dimensions simultaneously.
Numerous activities interspersed throughout the text highlight real-world situations, helping readers see how the concepts presented can be used in their own work environment or personal life. Each chapter also includes discussion questions and references.
Preface
Acknowledgments
Authors
Part I : Structuring Hard Decisions
Chapter 1 : The Case for a Structured Analytic Decision Process
Chapter 2 : Framing Decisions with Influence Diagrams
Chapter 3 : Common Decision Templates
Part II : Decisions with Multiple Objectives
Chapter 4 : Structure Decisions with Multiple Objectives
Chapter 5 : Structured Trade-Offs for Multiple Objective Decisions: Multi-Attribute Utility Theory
Chapter 6 : Value and Risk Management for Multi-Objective Decisions
Chapter 7 : Multiple Objective Decisions with Limited Data: Analytical Hierarchy Process
Part III : Decisions and Management Under Uncertainty
Chapter 8 : Value-Added Risk-Management Framework and Strategies
Chapter 9 : Spreadsheet Simulation for Decisions with Uncertainty
Chapter 10 : Decisions with Uncertainty: Decision Trees
Chapter 11 : Structured Risk Management and the Value of Information and Delay
Chapter 12 : Risk Attitude and Utility Theory
Part IV : Challenges to "Rational" Decisions
Chapter 13 : Forecast Bias and Expert Interviews
Chapter 14 : Decision Bias
Part V : Decisions with Multiple Perspectives
Chapter 15 : Value-Added Negotiations
Chapter 16 : Ethical Decisions
Chapter 17 : Strategic Direction, Planning, and Decision Making
Appendix A: Instructions for Downloading the DecisionTools Suite
Appendix B: Instructions for Downloading Logical Decisions
Index
