The Four-Step Decision Making Process as a simple way to arrive at rational decisions

Essay from the year 2010 in the subject Sociology - Communication, grade: 1,0, University of Applied Sciences Riedlingen, language: English, abstract: In the days of globalization, dynamic markets, increasing competition and customers needs making a decision and/or choosing an alternative is becoming progressively more difficult. Especially in case of complex decisions individuals often think that they cannot cope with it - in spite of their known common sense. Making a decision means balancing multiple objectives and is nearly always accompanied by conditions of uncertainty; uncertainty regarding the future, the consequences of the different alternatives or even due to the variety of goals. But regardless of the respective case to be considered - the more information the 'decision makers' have, the better will be the decision. However, not only the action itself is relevant and decisively - also the selection criteria, which help to orient oneself within the variety of different possibilities and - therefore - guide the decision making. Moreover, particularly these criteria force us to choose not only among the possible courses of action but also among the means of evaluating such actions. The purpose of the decision making process is to find the best promising of all possible alternatives - subject to the respective goals of the 'decision makers'. A successful decision making process should use and pass through some basic steps of decision making. A simple model to follow might be the four-step decision making process that is explained in the following. This essay is to give an entire overview of the four-step decision making process as the art of balancing different objectives including its single steps. In order to illustrate them, each of those stages is supported by a current example of a decision that is currently to be made at ...... Based on a short company profile giving some background information regarding the company ........, chapter 3 concentrates on the decision making process itself. In the following each of the process steps is theoretically explained and practically accompanied by the mentioned example. The essay ends with a brief conclusion summarizing all results and findings.