Module BUSI41615: Management Decision Making

Department: Management and Marketing

BUSI41615: Management Decision Making

Pre-requisites

Corequisites

Excluded Combinations

Aims

• to give students an in-depth understanding at an advanced level of the complexities of decision making, and how decisions can be improved by specialist techniques such as decision analysis and scenario thinking;
• to enable students to evaluate critically both the quality of management judgement and the assumptions underlying decision aiding techniques.

Content

• How people choose between alternatives;
• Improving choice using multi-attribute value analysis techniques;
• Psychological pitfalls in choice such as overconfidence, escalation of commitment, and shift-to-risk in decision making;
• Decision analysis - methods and techniques for making decisions that involve uncertainties;
• Scenario planning — the process of analysing possible future events by considering alternative possible outcomes;
• Scenario planning versus decision analysis — creativity and the framing of decisions;
• Decision making in management teams - pitfalls and remedies;
• Decision architecture and other emerging techniques.

Learning Outcomes

• By the end of this module, student should have:
• a specialist knowledge of how individuals and management teams make decisions and the potential pitfalls they face;
• a critical appreciation of the assumptions, implications, and limitations of decision analysis and other systems designed to support and aid judgement and decision making.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• Through a combination of lectures, seminars and guided reading addressing key topics in management decision making, students will acquire the advanced skills and knowledge to enable them to develop a thorough understanding of this specialist field of study.
• The summative assignment will test students' ability to apply the techniques they have learned to the analysis of a particular problem.

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment

Pre-assigned questions for seminars; group presentations; case studies discussed in seminars.