W4 LSP
Order Description
follow the same workplace problem from the previous week.
take this opportunity to share how the literature you are reviewing adds to your understanding of your workplace-based problems and perhaps fellow set members’
problems, and to share portions of your review for feedback.
Consider Bazerman and Moore’s (2008) work on bounded awareness. The main point is that a decision-maker’s assumptions about the nature of a problem can impede his or
her ability to see the range of possibilities
. What ‘taken for granted’ assumptions may impede the ability to formulate problems and make decisions?
For example, if you assume that computers must have keyboards, you will never imagine the possibility of tablet computing. Similarly, if you assume computers must
always be connected to printers by cables, you may not imagine Bluetooth technology.
How then does one utilise both present information and future possibilities to define problems and make decisions?
• Ford Motor Company’s Edsel venture , answer the following questions:
• What was the problem identified by Ford’s decision-makers?
• What errors in problem formulation did they make?
• What other forms of information could they have utilised?
• What advice would you give to enable other manufacturers to avoid making similar mistakes?
• Describe a time when bounded awareness affected your own work. To what degree was your decision-making based on information and analysis? Intuition?
• What was the outcome of your decision?
• Do you believe the outcome would have changed if you had utilised equal parts information and intuition?