Decision Making Model
Identify one important decision that you recently made or will make in the near future.

Decision making is the process of making a choice by selecting the best among the different alternatives. Before decisions are made, one has to evaluate all the alternatives from which the advantages and disadvantages are known. My most important decision that I recently made was my career choice; that is nursing profession. Choosing my career was not an easy task given that I was to choose the best from the two options I had; that is, choosing to do nursing or engineering profession. As a result, I chose on one most appropriate model; that is intuitive decision making-model that helped me in making appropriate decision on the best career.

Select the most appropriate model reflecting the type of decision.

Decision modeling is significant in providing a framework for making informed decisions by simulating probable outcomes, using…...

Thinking outside of the box is important, but if a person gets too far outside of that box it can be very confusing when it comes to trying to determine what options are viable and what should be avoided. I could have used that step in the model to my advantage, because I was not clear about my options. Basically, I saw my two choices as staying at my old job or getting a better job, but I did not stop to consider what "better" really meant, or how I might have been able to make my own job better suited to me without the need to leave my job and company to work with another organization or to try to work at something similar but in a slightly different capacity.
Managers who are interested in helping companies move forward and/or who are interested in staying relevant and valuable in…...

mla

References

Brooks, M.P. (2002). Planning theory for practitioners. Chicago: American Planning Association.

Robbins, S.P., & Judge, T.A. (2007). Organizational behavior (12th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making: The Ponzi Scheme
Everyone makes decisions, both good and bad, throughout their lives. ecently, there has been quite a bit of talk about the bad decisions that businesses and their executives have made. Issues like the stock market and sub-prime mortgage issues have financially devastated some people, as have Ponzi schemes. These types of schemes create fraudulent investments that seen to offer great rates of return (Dunn, 2004). Instead of investing, though, the person running the scheme is using the investment money from new investors to pay the "dividends" of previous investors. More and more money is needed to sustain the scheme, but by the time everything collapses the original person running the scheme has pocketed and/or spent a huge amount of money (Dunn, 2004). Many people have been jailed for Ponzi schemes, as most people do not get away with them for very long because…...

mla

References

Dunn, D. (2004). Ponzi: The incredible true story of the king of financial cons (Library of Larceny) (Paperback). New York: Broadway.

Frankel, T. (2012). The Ponzi scheme puzzle: A history and analysis of con artists and victims. USA: Oxford University Press.

Adolescent Decision-Making
Adolescents have a lot of social and personal temptations to either resist or to experiment with, including the following: smoking, using drugs, using alcohol, unsafe driving stunts, getting involved in crime, unsafe sexual practices, and other risky behaviors. These personal decisions of course impact the individual adolescents, but they also impact the greater society, according to a journal article in Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

Positive Attribute: If adolescents could get control of behaviors and avoid those practices that are unhealthy, it could "…set a different lifetime pattern" but also this avoidance and making better choices could have a "…broad impact" in terms of reducing crime, and in terms of reducing "the burdens of disease, injury, human suffering and association economic costs" (Reyna, et al., 2006). Still, getting control of bad behaviors would be a positive attribute of adolescence.

Negative Attribute: One of the problems that the authors point out…...

mla

Works Cited

Gleeson, B. (2012). 4 Ways For Leaders to Make a Decision. Forbes. Retrieved September

23, 2014, from  http://www.forbes.com .

Reyna, V.F., and Farley, F. (2006). Risk and Rationality in Adolescent Decision Making.

Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7(1), 1-11.

Demographics of Raleigh, NC
Demographic and independent variables relevant to complete a demand analysis include population size and Average income per household. An area with a high population size is most likely to have potential for demand of products, According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2010) the there are 403,892 people in Raleigh, NC. In line with this, the population must be able to have disposable income to buy these products. The relationship between product demand and income is a good indicator of Gross Domestic Product. It is the broadest measure of income generated in the economy. However in demand analysis, personal or household incomes are useful. The income per capita of Raleigh is estimated at $29,771 (Sperlings Best Places, 2010). Therefore, it is critical for a serious business to consider these two demographic factors in demand analysis and estimation. The economy must be an active one in order for business…...

1. Which of the Six Thinking Hats do you use most often when making a decision? From your experiences, tell us two advantages you have given yourself when you have managed your emotions by looking at a challenge from different perspectives (such as the Debono model) while making decisions?a. From my experience, I find myself using the white hat associated with data analytics much more frequently. I personally have recently looked into the stock market and how data can be used to make better informed decisions. I find that my thinking has steadily shifted to much more data-oriented decisions associated with making sound conclusions. The data perspective has been beneficial as it helps me to stay grounded from making decisions based purely on greed.b. The two advantages of managing emotions is that you avoid rash decisions without regard to data. Another advantage associated with using the Debone model is that…...

Decision Making
Decision-making

Scenario

Anderson Children's Hospital (ACH) is an internationally known and recognized pediatric hospital that provides the full range of services from primary to critical care units, located in San Francisco, CA with affiliated care centers throughout the Bay Area. The board of directors at ACH would like to create a mobile-crisis program to be piloted in the City of San Francisco and eventually grow to service the entire Bay Area. The following sections present the process through which the Board of Directors is trying to navigate towards its final decision.

Core question

At the core of the following proposal is this 2-part question: Should ACH create a mobile crisis program to be piloted in the City of San Francisco for (up to) one year with the intent of expanding its funding, personnel, and service area over the next 3-5 years throughout the entire Bay Area and if so, what does the process…...

mla

References

Liese, Friedrich and Miescke, Klaus-J. (2008). Statistical Decision Theory: Estimation, Testing, and Selection. Springer.

Bernardo, JE & Smith, Adrian (2000). Bayesian theory. New York: Wiley.

Ahrens, J., & Dieter, U. (1982). Computer Generation of Poisson Deviates. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software 8 (2): 163 -- 179.

Not even the most brilliant, ethical, and rational person has the ability to research every conceivable implication and alternative before making every decision in life.
Group decision-making is another method of decision-making, where the decision is often arrived at by consensus or committee, such as coming to a decision as to where to take a family vacation. The decision is often time-consuming, because ideally it must please everyone, although quite often no one is fully pleased (Petress, 2002). Multiple levels of irrationality are injected into the process, even if the 'team leader' (the parents who are paying for the vacation) have the final veto. To make the group decision-making process more efficient, often a vote is taken at the end of the discussion if the effort is supposed to be democratic. It can be superior to individual decision-making in that individuals can point out when group members are being irrational,…...

mla

Works Cited

Baker, G. (2004). "Decision Making." University of Florida. Retrieved 20 Oct 2007 at  http://www.unf.edu/~gbaker/Man6204/Decision.PDF 

Levitt, Barbara & Clifford Nass. (Jun 1989) "The lid on the garbage can: institutional constraints on decision making in the technical core of college-text publishers." Administrative Science Quarterly. Retrieved 20 Oct 2007 at  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4035/is_n2_v34/ai_7376934 

Petress, Ken. (2002). "An alternative model for decision-making." Journal of Instructional Psychology. Retrieved 20 Oct 2007 at  http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FCG/is_3_29/ai_91707794/pg_1 

Williams, Tim. (Mar 2004). "Setting Impossible Standards."

Decision-Making
Approaches in decision making

Decision-making forms a very significant component of success at work, at the same time it can be the cause of failure if the conditions are wrong and if those involved are not on the same page. Confusion with regard to decision-making can cause conflict to teams, supervisors, managers, and team leaders. There are various decision-making approaches that can be adopted depending on the situations, these include: consensus, majority vote, minority (subcommittee), expert, authority with discussion, and authority without discussion (Eisenfuhr, 2011). This will describe the 'consensus' and 'expert' approaches of decision-making with respect to the scenario selected.

In the consensus or group decision-making approach, the manager becomes part of the team and involves everyone who is willing and ready to contribute in the decision-making process. The fact that the word consensus is used does not signify that all those involved fully agree with whatever decision is reached,…...

mla

References

Bubnicki, Z. (2003). Analysis and decision making in uncertain systems. New York, NY:

Springer-Verlag.

Eisenfuhr, F. (2011). Decision making. New York, NY: Springer.

Workplace behaviors reflect a combination of individual personality and the environmental context. We each have a personal schema about ourselves, others, and social norms (Arvinen-Muondo, n.d., p. 4). My perceptions of situations frequently influence the way I react to specific situations. Often, I misinterpret the words or actions of others and have learned the importance of gaining clarity through clear communications. Unfortunately, clear communication is not always possible in an organization like mine, in which there is an organizational hierarchy in spite of its being a small company. Ours is a small private ambulance service, and I serve as a medic. We are the core personnel and yet often medics are treated with less respect than they could be. As Duggan (n.d.) points out, unfamiliar or ambiguous situations tend to trigger stress and difficulties communicating in the workplace.
One behavior I have exhibited strictly due to my perception of ambiguity is…...

mla

References

Arvinen-Muondo, R. (n.d.). Perceptions, making decisions, and people management.

Bigelow, L. (n.d.). Examples of workplace perception and conflict issues. Retrieved online:  http://smallbusiness.chron.com/examples-workplace-perception-conflict-issues-13097.html 

Duggan, T. (n.d.). Organizational behavior perceptions and attributes. Retrieved online:  http://smallbusiness.chron.com/organizational-behavior-perceptions-attributes-10835.html

Groups Make Decisions?
Decision making by an individual is a straightforward process due to the unilateral source thereof. ut when it comes to group decision making, the matter has several complications particular when there are disparate opinions and several issues that needed addressed. Group decision making even becomes more challenging when there is a minority that is forming dissenting opinions. The paper by De Dreu and West is focused on this especially in determining if minority dissent and individual creativity hinders or contributes to group decision making. To prove or disprove this hypothesis, two studies were made where the first "involved self-managed postal service teams responsible for the distribution of parcels in a particular geographic region while the second involved semiautonomous product and management teams in a variety of organizations (De Dreu & West, 2001, p. 1193)." The results of the two studies proved that minority dissent is a positive…...

mla

Bibliography:

De Dreu, C.K.W. & West, M.A. (2001). "Minority dissent and team innovation: The importance of participation in decision making." Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(6): 1191-1201. doi 10.1037//0021-9010.86.6.1191

Businesses make decisions on a daily basis. Some of these decisions affect man people in the organization, where other decisions are minor and only impact a few people. A decision-making procedure based on sound information and data leads to effective conclusions. Today's fast-paced business environment demands the making of informed decisions based on critical thinking skills. It is our thinking that determines the extent to which we think through the implications of the decisions we make. It is our thinking that determines whether we can identify the assumptions we are making, and whether we should questions those assumptions. A number of different decision-making processes have been suggested. Depending on the type of decision faced, some techniques are more appropriate than others. As a supervisor for United Parcel Service, overseeing 40 individuals who must process and drive thousands of packages to the San Diego airport each morning at 6:30am, organization is…...

mla

References Cited

Foreman, Charles W.L., "Modeling and Improving Human Decision-Making," from the Management Course for Presidents, 3-4.

Prokesh, S.E. "Unleashing the power of learning: an interview with British Petroleum's John Browne." Harvard Business Review, 75 (September -- October 1997), 146 -- 168.

Robinson, Alifantis, et. al. "Modeling and Improving Human Decision-Making with Simulation." Proceedings of the 2001 Winter Simulation Conference,

B.A. Peters, J.S. Smith, D.J. Medeiros, and M.W. Rohrer, eds.

person has to make decisions based upon logic and their individual sense of morality. Sometimes, difficult decisions have to be made either at the home or in the workplace. When such occasions arise, the person must make their choice based on the available options. Ethical theory is comprised of the various hypotheses by which people make so-called ethical decisions. What is right or wrong morally is dependent on the society that constructs those morals. This can make the issue of ethics in a moral quandary even more confusing. It can be difficult trying to make the right choice ethically.
Among the moral dilemmas that can be found in the workplace are issues of separation and segregation based on gender, race, or any other separation factor which would judge anyone based on anything but merit. One of the major debates in the United States is over the concept of Affirmative Action…...

Decisions by School Superintendents
Improper Attitude and Unprofessional Conduct of Teachers

To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society - President Theodore oosevelt.

That teaching is at one and the same time an intellectual as well as a moral endeavor, is an idea that is well entrenched in the minds of men since centuries past. The sayings of great teachers of ancient times bear ample testimony to this premise, which continues to hold sway across nations and vastly differing civilizations over the years.

In the sense that it takes care of the general well being of young students entrusted to the care of an educational institution and ensures that they are treated fairly and accorded the respect they are due as persons, teaching is most certainly a moral activity. It is concerned with building and maintaining relationships of trust with pupils and colleagues in schools…...

mla

References

Anderson, D.S., & Biddle, B.J. (Eds.) (1991). Knowledge for Policy: Improving Education through Research. New York: The Falmer Press.

Ave, M. (2002, April 24). Jesuit High teacher fired amid misconduct claim. Retrieved December 19, 2002 at  http://www.sptimes.com/2002/04/24/TampaBay/Jesuit_High_teacher_f.shtml .

Barth, R.S. (1990). Improving schools from within. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.

Benson, P. (1997). All Kids Are Our Kids: What Communities Must Do To Raise Caring and Responsible Children and Adolescents. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

These two techniques of reflexive and logic-reasoning are very effective in creating consensus and insight form multiple decision makers over time (Muller, Turner, 2010). In the long-term, this technique of decision making and the involvement of the leaders on Kava can potentially reduce their resistance to the development as well.
After Nik and his team have defined their common vision, mission and objectives, they need to also define the strategies and alternatives to attain them. The strategies must be done at as little cost and risk as possible as Mr. Morales' comments in the case study indicate only a small budget is available. The team also needs to concentrate on the socially responsible nature of the decisions as well, as Mr. Morales has stated that he wants any project done on Kava to be consistent with show great respect for the citizens of the island nation, be highly ethical, and…...

mla

References

Alstyne, Marshall van, Erik Brynjolfsson, and Stuart Madnick (1997). "The Matrix of Change: A Tool for Business Process Reengineering." MIT Sloan School  http://ccs.mit.edu/papers/CCSWP189/ccswp189.html 

Muller, R., & Turner, R.. (2010). Leadership competency profiles of successful project managers. International Journal of Project Management, 28(5), 437.

Pandelica, I., Pandelica, a., & Dabu, B.. (2010). The Response of Organizations in Crisis Conditions. Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, 15(2), 151-160.

Paul, R. And Elder, L. (2001) - Critical Thinking-Tools for Taking Charge of Your

Here are a few unique and fresh essay topics for a thesis on affordability of housing:

1. Examining the impact of tiny house communities on housing affordability and community development
2. Analyzing the role of co-housing and co-living models in addressing affordable housing challenges
3. Investigating the potential of modular and prefabricated housing as a solution for affordable housing shortages
4. Exploring the effectiveness of community land trusts in preserving affordable housing options in gentrifying neighborhoods
5. Evaluating the intersectionality of race, class, and housing affordability in urban planning and policy-making decisions.
6. Understanding the relationship between homelessness and affordable housing strategies in cities across the....

Topic 1: The Ethical Implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Workplace

Key Issues:
The potential for AI to automate jobs and displace human workers, leading to unemployment and economic insecurity.
AI's impact on workplace privacy and surveillance, with AI-powered monitoring systems potentially infringing on workers' rights.
The need for ethical guidelines and regulations governing the development and use of AI in the workplace, to ensure fairness and protect workers' rights.

Topic 2: The Ethics of Genetic Engineering and Human Enhancement

Key Issues:
The potential benefits of genetic engineering, such as curing diseases, improving cognitive abilities, and extending lifespan.
The ethical....

Depression: Exploring Its Causes, Impact, and Management

Introduction:

Depression, a debilitating mental disorder, has far-reaching consequences on individuals and society. Its complex etiology, diverse manifestations, and challenges in management warrant careful exploration. This essay delves into a comprehensive analysis of depression, examining its causes, impact, and effective management strategies.

Part I: Understanding the Causes of Depression

1. Biological Factors:
- Genetic predisposition
- Neurotransmitter imbalances (e.g., serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine)
- Brain structural and functional abnormalities

2. Psychological Factors:
- Negative thought patterns
- Learned helplessness
- Low self-esteem

3. Environmental Factors:
- Childhood trauma or abuse
- Stressful life events
- Social isolation

Part II: Examining the....

Rational Choice Theory

Rational choice theory, a prominent sociological perspective, posits that individuals make decisions and engage in behaviors based on careful calculation and rational evaluation of potential outcomes. This theory emphasizes the role of individual agency, rationality, and utility maximization in understanding human behavior.

Key Assumptions:

Individuals are rational: They possess the cognitive abilities to make informed decisions and calculate the potential costs and benefits of various actions.
Individuals are utility-maximizers: They strive to choose actions that will yield the greatest benefit or satisfaction.
Individuals act in their own self-interest: They prioritize their own goals and desires when making decisions.
Individuals....