Have you ever been frustrated in making decisions on the job? This Discussion allows you to practice making a decision in a work situation by using various decision-making models.

These models are intended to make the decision-making process easier by providing a framework for arriving at a wise solution.

To prepare for this Discussion:

Review the Learning Resources this week.

Consider a decision you had to make for an organization (i.e., to buy a piece of equipment).

Reflect on the process you used to make the decision (the rational model, bounded rationality, or intuition).

Choose one of the following decision-making models to use during this Discussion:

Rational model

Bounded rationality

Intuition

Review the following scenario and reach a decision based on the model you chose.

Case Study: The Problem of Untimely Performance Evaluations

You are the manager of a department in a health care organization that has undergone significant closing of units and departments and redeployment of employees to other areas.

Several staff members have been redeployed to your department within the past three months. It was your understanding that managers who had employees redeploying to other departments were to complete performance evaluations on the employees they were losing prior to their moving to another department in order to be fair to the employees.

During the last accreditation visit from The Joint Commission, your health care organization was cited for lack of timeliness in completing employee performance evaluations. Following that visit, two and a half years ago, Human Resources and all of the system managers were taken to task and told that employee performance evaluations will be completed on time.

In preparation for an anticipated reaccreditation survey visit from The Joint Commission, the Human Resources Department has done an audit of personnel files and determined that four of the five staff members who were redeployed to your department did not have performance evaluations completed by their previous supervisors.

Three of those four evaluations are now overdue, and the HR staff is coming to you as the current supervisor to resolve the problem. If those files are requested for review by the surveyors, the lack of timeliness in the completion of those evaluations will reflect poorly on you, as well as on the organization as a whole.

The options that immediately came to mind are that you could:

Complete a performance evaluation now.

Have the previous supervisor(s) complete the performance evaluation since the employees have been in your department only for a few months.

Post a comprehensive response to the following:

What did you decide?

What decision-making model did you use?

Using that model, how did you arrive at the decision?

Name one benefit and one challenge to the type of decision-making process you used.

With whom would you need to communicate in order to implement your decision? How would you communicate your decision? Would the communication be formal or informal?

RESOURCES

Robbins, S.P., & Judge, T. A. (2017). Essentials of organizational behavior (14th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Chapter 5, "Personality and Values"

The authors describe how personality is measured as exemplified by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality framework and explain the factors that determine personality. They also explore the importance of values and compare generational differences in values.

Chapter 6, "Perception and Individual Decision Making"

This chapter explains the factors that influence perception. It also identifies shortcuts individuals use in making judgments about others. In addition, it compares the link between perception and decision making, as well as three critical ethical decision criteria.

Chapter 3, "Attitudes and Job Satisfaction"

This chapter contrasts the three components of an attitude and summarizes the relationship between attitudes and behavior. It explores the major job attitudes, including job satisfaction, job involvement, organizational commitment, perceived organizational support, and employee engagement.

Chapter 4, "Emotions and Moods"

This chapter differentiates between moods and emotions and describes the impact emotional labor has on employees. It explains emotional intelligence and shows how to apply concepts about emotions and moods to specific organizational issues.