Management Decisions

Individual Assignment

MGT 101

Principles of Management

Due Date: 19th March 2010

Lecturer: Puan Norzan Abdullah

Companies always face challenges and problems in their field of work. The managers make different types of decisions in order to solve those problems. Problem solving is to identify the problem and then take appropriate action to find the solution, it is very critical for the right information to be available to right people so that they can make the right decision which is making a choice between the different courses of action, so the effectiveness of the decision depends on the quality of information provided. The decisions made are either programmed or non-programmed decisions, programmed decisions use solutions from previous experiences and apply them to a routine problem, while non-programmed decisions use unique crafted solutions for each unique problem. The decision facing Greyhound Lines INC. executives was obviously a non-programmed decision, because Greyhound’s problem was not experienced before and it was unpredictable at all. Greyhound Lines was suffering from a raise in operating costs and had a bad customer services as their employees were seen making fun of passengers along with ignoring them and handling the baggage haphazardly and all that was considered a crisis which is an unpredictable problem that leads to a disaster if not resolved quickly and in a proper way. So as a result, the executives acted quickly to resolve this crisis that they were going through and made many sudden changes in the company that included massive cuts in personnel, routs and services. Moreover, they decided to computerize the whole system from passenger reservations to fleet scheduling.

In decision making there are different models, Greyhound Lines executives used the administrative model because they acted with limited information and decided to choose the first satisfactory alternative that came to their attention without realizing the...