2. The main phases or activities of the decision making process, including for example: the background leading up to the problem situation; problem recognition; development and evaluation of alternatives; selection of alternative; and outcome of the decision. Where possible, analyze the information seeking and information use behaviors in the decision making process.
3. Analyze your case using one or more of the models introduced this week. You may also introduce other theoretical perspectives/cases to enrich your analysis. Show how these models/perspectives provide insight into your case.
4. Assess the overall quality of the decision making process. Identify its strengths and limitations. Suggest ways of improving the process.
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Case Study Sources
These are initial suggestions that might help you to identify cases. You would typically need to look for additional material after selecting a case to study.
Bazerman, M. H., & Watkins, M. D. 2004. Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming, and How to Prevent Them. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Burns, Christopher. 2008. Deadly Decisions: How false knowledge sank the Titanic, blew up the shuttle and led America into war. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Browne, Mairead. 1993. Organizational Decision Making and Information. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. (Decision making by a council of a higher education institute in Sydney, Australia.)
Choo, Chun Wei. 2009. Organizational Disasters: Why They Happen and How They May be Prevented. Management Decision, 46 (1): 32-46
Chua, Alton Y.K., Selcan Kaynak, and Schubert S.B. Foo. 2006. An Analysis Of The Delayed Response To Hurricane Katrina Through The Lens Of Knowledge Management. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58 (3):391-403.
Drummond, Helga. 1997. Escalation in Decision Making: The Tragedy of Taurus. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Evan, William M., and Mark Manion. 2002. Minding the Machines: Preventing Technological Disasters. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR. (Bhopal, Chernobyl, Ford-Firestone, Love Canal, Three Mile Island, Y2K, and many others.)
Fay, S. 1996. The Collapse of Barings: Panic, Ignorance and Greed. London: Arrow Business Books.
Finkelstein, S., Whitehead, J., & Campbell, A. 2009. Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Gerstein, M.S., & Ellsberg, M. 2008. Flirting with Disaster: Why Accidents Are Rarely Accidental. New York: Union Square Press. (Chernobyl, Merck Vioxx, Hurricane Katrina)
E. Frank Harrison. 1999. The Managerial Decision-Making Process. 5th Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. (Iranian hostage crisis, Philip Morris in 1984, General Motors in 1978)
Kovacs, Beatrice. 1990. The Decision-Making Process for Library Collections: Case Studies in Four Types of Libraries. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. (Collection development decision making in public libraries, school libraries, academic libraries, and special libraries.)
Neck, Chris P., and Gregory Moorhead. 1992. Jury Deliberations in the Trial of US vs. John Delorean: A Case Analysis of Groupthink Avoidance and Enhanced Framework. Human Relations 45 (10):1077-1091.
Perrow, Charles. 1999. Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Three Mile Island nuclear reactor accident, Bhopal Union Carbide plant, air traffic control.)
Shrivastava, Paul. Bhopal: Anatomy of a Crisis. 2nd ed. London: P. Chapman, 1992.
The 9/11 Commission. 2004. The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. New York: W. W. Norton.
The Members of the Committee of the Inquiry. 2000. BSE Inquiry Report, Volume 1: Findings & Conclusions. London, UK: The Stationery Office.
Walker, J. S. 2004. Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Answer preview
constructed to protect the city were overwhelmed by the water that was to the levels of 10 inches high. It was impossible for most of the agencies to respond since their headquarters were also submerged in water. The problem facing the city now was how to safely rescue the residents. At the time the city had approximately 500, 000 residents and close to 80% had evacuated when the order was made. The mayor decided that the remaining ones go to the Superdome. The outcome of this decision was that even though some of the residents moved to the Superdome, the mayor had not implemented the flood plan and the people also did not have food, water, and the sanitary conditions were not good (Reynolds et al., 2015).
