Decision Making in Hospitality Industry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3250 words

Decision Making in Hospitality Industry - Essay Example According to Kolb (1983, p109) the central characteristics of an organisation is that they are problem solving systems, the success is measured by how efficiently they solve routine problems associated with survival and growth in a changing world. A hard problem is one which is well defined and structured and one where an outcome is normally predictive. Hard problems can be described as simple, well-defined, bounded and tame. Hard problems are where; the problem is known, objectives are clear, priorities are clear, knowledge base exists, limited people involved and can be treated as a separate matter, none or choice of clear solutions available, easy to measure success, often short term issues are involved and are of limited time scale. Examples of Hard Problems: data Analysis (trend, regression, distribution etc. Queue Modelling, Line balancing (Bottleneck analysis), Decision analysis and decision trees, Project Management techniques, Business modelling and forecasting, Route scheduling and location analysis, Production scheduling, staff scheduling. A soft problem is a problem which is complex in terms of structure, is not well defined, involve the social system: interaction of people and the outcome cannot be predicted. (After Hicks 1991). Soft problems can be described as Complex, unbounded, ill-defined and messy. ... Queue Modelling, Line balancing (Bottleneck analysis), Decision analysis and decision trees, Project Management techniques, Business modelling and forecasting, Route scheduling and location analysis, Production scheduling, staff scheduling. A soft problem is a problem which is complex in terms of structure, is not well defined, involve the social system: interaction of people and the outcome cannot be predicted. (After Hicks 1991). Soft problems can be described as Complex, unbounded, ill-defined and messy. Soft problems are where the problems are not clear, objectives are not clear, priorities are not clear, many people involved, affects other areas / departments, what to do is not known, difficult to measure success, often medium to long term issues, longer uncertain time scale. Problem solving: O' Loughlin and Mc Fadzeam (1999) suggest several approaches to problem solving: Cognitive Processing Individual Traits - theorists believe that individual perception may influence problem solving performance. Reasoned action perspective - focuses on the relationship between the intended behaviour during the problem solving process and the actual behaviour being observed Decision theory - a process whereby management chooses a solution to the problem from a range of alternatives using quantitative data analysis. Organisational trait - an attempt is made to explain organisational problem solving terms of an organisations physical attributes Group problem solving - in companies problems are solved in groups the result of group thinking. The process of solving hard problems: 1) Data Gathering: Data needs to be gathered on activities, resources, costs and constraints. 2) Generation of Ideas/ Plans: Activities needs to be prioritized. While