Classical Model of Decision Making

International Journal of Business and Management

June, 2008

The Classical Model of Decision Making Has Been Accepted as not providing an Accurate Account of How People Typically Make Decisions
Bin Li Foreign Languages Department, Guang Dong University of Finance Guangzhou, 510521, China E-mail: [e-mail]
Abstract

Decision making is an accepted part of everyday human life. People all make varying importance decisions every day, thus the idea that decision making can be a rather difficult action may seem so strange and unbelievable. However, a large number of empirical studies have shown that most people in organizations are much poorer at decision making. Therefore, people began to pay more attention to understand hot to make a suitable decision.
Keywords: Decision making, Rational decision-making, Demonstrate classical decision making 1. Introduction

Decision making is one of the most central processes in organizations and a basic task of management at all levels. According to Cole (2004:151), decision making is “a process of identifying a problem, evaluating alternatives, and selecting one alternative.” During the whole process, people are making the best choice from among several option based on the current situation. Additionally, Rollinson (2002) considered that decision making is the process of producing a solution to a recognized problem. There are three basic activities involved in decision making: intelligence activity, design activity and choice activity. Although all the decisions are made based on these three main activities, not all decisions are the same (www.bized.ac.uk). Some are relatively simple and others involve a more complex range of considerations. Consequently, people need an approach to understand decisions making. Good decision making is an essential skill for career success generally, and effective leadership particularly.
2. The classical decision making model

The traditional approach to understanding individual decision

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