An Seu Exercise for Student Strategic Decision Analysis
Abstract
An Seu Exercise for Student Strategic Decision Analysis SAGE Publications, Inc.1981DOI: 10.1177/105256298100600315 James R. Lang University of Kentucky EXCHANGE: The Organizational Behavior Teaching Journal 1981, Volume VI, Number 3 Contingency approaches to strategic decision making maintain that the essence of strategy is the matching of the organization with its environment. This matching process is based on comprehensive analysis of both the organization and the environment. The complexity and abstract nature of strategy situations make this analysis and the subsequent decision making a very difficult cognitive task which is not easily learned. Under conditions of bounded rationality in complex situations, critical information can easily be ignored, certain kinds of information can be overvalued, and choices can be made which are not consistent with the decision maker's perceptions of the situation. One of the challenges facing the professor in teaching strategic decision making is to find ways to help students to extend their rationality and to move beyond simply classifying data with convenient categories (strengths/weaknesses, internal/external, threats/opportunities, etc.). To become more efficient in decision making, students must develop abilities, noted by Duncan (1972), to: (a) know which environmental factors affect a decision situation; (b) assess the costs of incorrect decisions;