Purpose of this Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to provide students with an insightful understanding of issues related to decision making in business world. Students should learn decision making theories and skills to identify pressing problems, make decisions under a fast-changing and unpredictable environment changing business environments and eventually solve them in a timely and efficient manner. Indeed, students should be aware of challenges and a high degree of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) in running their businesses.

Scenario

The notion of "VUCA" is gaining popularity as it is widely used to vividly describe the current scenarios of ‘unpredictable and uncontrollable’ business environments. It a trendy catchall for “Hey, it's crazy out there!” (Bennett and Lemoine, 2014). 

New products and business models are being developed to expand market share and respond to market needs. For instance, 5G smartphones, online shopping and e-commerce, airlines and airports with long-haul, non-stop flights are being launched by key industry players with huge investments. These organisations are seemingly operating in a VUCA environment where crucial information and knowledge are limited, robust business and technical analyses are incomplete, and management consensus on goals and problem definition are difficult to achieve. Furthermore, there is no valuable precedent and lesson drawn from any 20/20 hindsight that could probably enhance their chances of success. They are seemingly in a situation of “unknown unknowns”. A case in point is the failure of Airbus 380 superjumbo airplane that never should have been built and ended with a giant “I told you” moment (Reed, 2019). Despite that, top management is expected to have good judgement to make tough, high-risk decisions within the boundaries of scope, time, and cost, and eventually, make some decent return on investment for growth and development. 

Looking at the scenario above, you and your team are expected to conduct a detailed analysis of organisation(s) in a particular industry on how they overcome challenges, tackle issues, implement decision-making processes and finally provide solutions to move their organization forward and upward.

Group Report 

Since it is a group assignment, you should form a team of 5 students. Your team is advised to discuss and confirm your choice with your lecturer before you start this assignment. Your report should cover the following subtitles:

1. Introduction to the concept of VUCA in a business environment

1.2 Discuss the following three situations that require judgement and decision making with two examples each

a)Crisis

b)Problems

c)Opportunity

1.3 Discuss two decision blunders made by multi-national companies.

1.4 Choose one of the blunders or the examples above with justification, discuss the lessons learned, and make recommendations of taking rational six steps of decision making, namely i) Recognition of Decision Requirement,

ii) Diagnosis and Analysis of Causes.

iii) Development of Alternatives,

iv) Selection of Desired Alternative,

v) Implementation of Chosen Alternative, i) Evaluation and Feedback to overcome the problem of poor decision making.

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