Introduction

Decisiveness can be best described as a hallmark justifying the greatness of a significant leader. However, in the current situation of the business world with the intervention of ever-changing technological implications and a highly competitive landscape, the business performance management of every company is entangled to strategic decision making. The digital savvy customers of the newer generation are many updates about corporate strategies and market condition in a competitive atmosphere is highly volatile. As an impact, maximum number of successful companies are circumnavigating their decision making around two basic factors, agility and visibility.

Case study approach of strategic decision making analysis

At first the business issue of the Nestle India can be highlighted. For the organisation the skill of fast decision making skill helped the company to overcome their recent market crisis. The authority for food safety and standards in India banned the primary product of Nestle India which is Maggi Noodles in the earlier half of 2018 (Nestle.com, 2017). Prompt decision making and a conclusive change in the commercial structure of the company. Previously, as the managing director for Nestle Inc. puts it, decisions were taken by the several departmental heads. The company now focuses on reducing the strata involved in decision making and arriving at quick conclusions (Nestle.com, 2017). Owing to ample segmentation of the decision making process, the company was not able to combat the situation when the issue regarding the Maggi Noodles which was alleged to contain more than the permissible limit of Sodium Mono-Glutamate in its taste maker (Graham, Harvey & Puri, 2015). The centralisation of the decision making process eased and speeded up the process of making counter promotions regarding the alleged scam.

According to the words of the CEO of the People Strong Human Resource services, the breaking down of the hierarchal organisational managerial structure is very essential for encouragement of agile decision making. The executives of the organisation, as Ray and Choudhury (2015), opines, in case of simplified decision making, are able to mobile the workforce and educate them regarding the key decisions and adequately support them to accomplish their goals. This strategy is known as the devolution of organisational power. In absence of a simplified decision making authority, the employees receive various instructors that are ambiguous and contradictory.

The strategy of simplifying decision making power, Coca Cola have also taken the decision to create a core committee that is cross-functional. This is a committee formed with the employees who engages in discussion with the executives and plans the implementation of the strategies. As Joseph-Williams, Elwyn, and Edwards (2014), puts it, this step is taken so that the managerial committee can be encouraged to take more prompt and quick decisions. This would help the core team of the employees to simply work schedules and work processes.

Proper decision making can help to reduce the operational cost of the company. Such a decision making implementation was done by the famous IT Company Infosys. The Human Resource department of the company took the decision to implement the decision of launching the Launchpad application (Infosys.com, 2018). This is actually a mobile based application that is for the use of the employees before they join the organisation (Chisholm, 2017). The “Ask me anything” web portal was also designed by the company. After the implementation of this decision, the cost of data correction reduced by 20% and the employee joining process was also simplified and made high paced.

The online movie ticket booking company, Book My Show also showcased agile decision making when the company faced competition from PayTM in the Indian market (Bookmyshow.com, 2018). The company immediately undertook the decision to franchise their outlets so that market capture can be accomplished easily. Hence market competition and changing market factors are a crucial factor that influences managers to undertake agile decisions. As per Janssen, van der Voort and Wahyudi (2017), decisions taken nowadays by the managers are destined to make proper outcomes. Hence it is evident that strategic decisions should be visible and as such the future outcomes of the decisions should be as expected by the company’s management. Other factors, as discussed in the course of the research study and advocated by Betsch (2014), like empowerment of people and as well as delegation of internal authority affects decision making.

Evaluation for better decision making

The organisations can however take more steps to develop their decision making and thus enhance the workplace productivity.

Co-working Space

Most of the work in the modern organisations today is executed in collaboration rather than individually. Most new emerging companies put too much emphasis on the open spaces. However, this facilitates collaboration as well as failing to give any privacy which is essential for crucial discussions as well as quite phone-calls. Hence for proper decision making a blend of enclosed as well as shared spaces is immensely required (Lian, Yen & Wang, 2014). This would help the management to make decisions properly as convey to the employees as required.

Real-Time Sharing

In modern days when work teams are distributed, they work in unison with clients as well as colleagues, who pertain to various origins. Here the conception is not only communicating with every stakeholder through video conferencing or the mode of text or even emails, as well as sharing of a physical space with all stakeholders for the purpose of spontaneous interactions. The organisations should take the decisions of installing real time sharing of equipment which integrate furniture as well as technology for bringing people space as also information for further collaboration, swift and clear decision making and enhancing productivity.

Conclusion

In the course of this report, the factors that affect decision making have been clearly specified. Analysing the recent business trends it can be easily concluded that business decisions agile as well as visible. The outcomes of the decisions taken should be evident. Besides, the breakdown of the hierarchal structure is also very important. This is evident from the case of the Nestle business case. Moreover, swift and prompt decisions saves the operational cost of the organisations also. This conclusion can be drawn from the case of the Infosys Company.

Reference List

1. Betsch, R. D. M. T. (2014). Preference theory: An affect-based approach to recurrent decision making. In The routines of decision making (pp. 69-96). Psychology Press.
2. Bookmyshow.com, (2018). About Us. Retrieved on 30^th September 2018. Retrieved from https://in.bookmyshow.com/
3. Chisholm, R. (2017). Interorganizational decision making. Routledge.
4. Graham, J. R., Harvey, C. R., & Puri, M. (2015). Capital allocation and delegation of decision-making authority within firms. Journal of Financial Economics, 115(3), 449-470.
5. Infosys.com, (2018). About Us. Retrieved on 30^th September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.infosys.com
6. Janssen, M., van der Voort, H., & Wahyudi, A. (2017). Factors influencing big data decision-making quality. Journal of Business Research, 70, 338-345.
7. Joseph-Williams, N., Elwyn, G., & Edwards, A. (2014). Knowledge management is not power for patients: a systematic review and thematic synthesis of patient-reported barriers and facilitators to shared decision making. Patient education and counseling, 94(3), 291-309.
8. Lian, J. W., Yen, D. C., & Wang, Y. T. (2014). An exploratory study to understand the critical factors affecting the decision to adopt cloud computing in Taiwan hospital. International Journal of Information Management, 34(1), 28-36.
9. Nestle.com, (2017). Annual Record. Retrieved on 30^th September 2018. Retrieved from https://www.nestle.com/investors/publications/2017
10. Ray, D., & Choudhury, S. R. (2015). Factors Affecting Consumer Decision Making For Purchasing Selected Home Appliance Products Based On Market Segmentation-A Feedback Study of People Associated With Management Education. Journal of Research in Business and Management, 3 (2), 6, 11.