BUS572-1

Individual Assignment 1

            The first concept that I learned during this first reading assignment was in Chapter 1 of Hard Facts.  The concept is the poor decision practices that the book defined as casual benchmarking, doing what worked in the past, and following deeply held ideologies.  This concept highlights these three mistakes that companies often make.  Benchmarking has to do with doing what works for other companies.  People also seem to follow what may have worked for them in the past with present issues.  Certain ideologies that people hold to be true may be used by them to run an organization.  An example of benchmarking given by the book is other airlines trying to imitate what Southwest does to achieve their success.  In different situations and cultures however, what works for Southwest may not work for other airlines. I think this is an important concept for any position of decision making to be aware of.  These three practices are ways that managers may handle a problem.  I think to be aware of these practices, managers can try to avoid following them to make their business decisions.  I would have never thought that these could be problems for management, but after reading this section I can see how they could hurt an organization rather than help it.  Therefore I think it is an important concept that many people may not think about.

            In the article “Best practices: How to evaluate psychological science for use by organizations” they discuss how common sense is not that first chose that should be used in business decision making.  Common sense is using your own instincts in decisions and it can be convenient and inexpensive.  The article states that it should be used only in the absent of scientific evidence.  I think this concept is important because it is probably used more often than scientific evidence in the business environment.  The usefulness of this article is to help people focus more on evidence first than always going with their instinct.  This is another concept I find interesting because common sense is probably always used over scientific evidence and this article sheds light on why that should not be the case.  I don’t think that using common sense will always fail and it may be the right decision in some cases, but I think that people perhaps will overlook the evidence more often than not and go with their common sense.

 

Schiff Estess, P. (1999, June 1). Getting Management Help From the Next Generation. In Entrepreneur. Retrieved June 29, 2014, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/17828

 

            The examples in this article are based on individual cases and experiences.  In one of the examples common sense is used as a good decision making tool.  The article states that no actual knowledge of the business was involved in the decision made.  However, this common sense decision had a positive outcome for the company.  Another example in this article related to what I read in the first two chapters of our book was about past decisions being past decisions.  The example found that what may not have worked in the past before did not stop the new management team from trying it again.   The article seems to contradict much of the first two chapters of the book.  I believe the examples in the articles were isolated cases and perhaps were not decisions made through research and evidence. 

            I found this week’s readings to be very informative.  Much of the information may not be the way I would have thought about things before.  I would not have thought about how one thing may work for one company may be a failure for another company.  It opened my eyes to really think more about the facts than what I think or feel about a situation.