What Is a Decision?
A decision is a choice made from among alternative courses of action that are available. The purpose of making a decision is to establish and achieve organizational goals and objectives. The reason for making a decision is that a problem exists, goals or objectives are wrong, or something is standing in the way of accomplishing them.
Thus the decision-making process is fundamental to management. Almost everything a manager does involves decisions, indeed, some suggest that the management process is decision making. Although managers cannot predict the future, many of their decisions require that they consider possible future events. Often managers must make a best guess at what the future will be and try to leave as little as possible to chance, hut since uncertainty is always there, risk accompanies decisions. Sometimes the consequences of a poor decision are slight; at other times they are serious.
Choice is the opportunity to select among alternatives. If there is no choice, there is no decision to be made. Decision making is the process of choosing, and many decisions have a broad range of choice. For example, a student may be able to choose among a number of different courses in order to implement the decision to obtain a college degree. For managers, every decision has constraints based on policies, procedures, laws, precedents, and the like. These constraints exist at all levels of the organization.
Alternatives are the possible courses of action from which choices can be made. If there are no alternatives, there is no choice and, therefore, no decision. If no alternatives are seen, often it means that a thorough job of examining the problems has not been done. For example, managers sometimes treat problems in an either/or fashion; this is their way of simplifying complex problems. But the tendency to simplify blinds them to other alternatives.
At the managerial level, decision making includes limiting alternatives as well as identifying them, and the range is from highly limited to practically unlimited.
Decision makers must have some way of determining which of several alternatives is best -- that is, which contributes the most to the achievement of organizational goals. An organizational goal is an end or a state of affairs the organization seeks to reach. Because individuals (and organizations) frequently have different ideas about how to attain the goals, the best choice may depend on who makes the decision. Frequently, departments or units within an organization make decisions that are good for them individually but that are less than optimal for the larger organization. Called suboptimization, this is a trade-off that increases the advantages to one unit or function but decreases the advantages to another unit or function. For example, the marketing manager may argue effectively for an increased advertising budget. In the larger scheme of things, however, increased funding for research to improve the products might be more beneficial to the organization.
These trade-offs occur because there are many objectives that organizations wish to attain simultaneously. Some of these objectives are more important than others, but the order and degree of importance often vary from person to person and from department to department. Different managers define the same problem in different terms. When presented with a common case, sales managers tend to see sales problems, production managers see production problems, and so on.
The ordering and importance of multiple objectives is also based, in part, on the values of the decision maker. Such values are personal; they are hard to understand, even by the individual, because they are so dynamic and complex. In many business situations different people's values about acceptable degrees of risk and profitability cause disagreement about the correctness of decisions.
People often assume that a decision is an isolated phenomenon. But from a systems point of view, problems have multiple causes, and decisions have intended and unintended consequences. An organization is an ongoing entity, and a decision made today may have consequences far into the future. Thus the skilled manager looks toward the future consequences of current decisions.
什么是决策？
决策是从可供挑选的行动方案中作出选择，目的在于确定并实现组织机构的目标或目的。之所以要决策是因为存在问题，或是目标或目的不对，或某种东西妨碍目标或目的实现。
因此，决策过程对于管理人员非常重要。管理者所做的一切几乎都与决策有关，事实上，有人甚至认为管理过程就是决策过程。虽然决策者不能预测未来，但他们的许多决策要求他们必须考虑未来可能会发生的情况。管理者必须对未来的事情作出最佳的猜测，并使偶然性尽可能少地发生。但因为总是存在着未知情况，所以决策往往伴随着风险。有时失误的决策带来的后果不很严重，但有时就会不堪设想。
选择就是从多种选项中进行取舍，没有选择，就没有决策。决策本身就是一个选择的过程，许多决策有着很广的选择范围。例如，学生为了实现自己获得学位的目标，可能会从多门课程中进行选择，对于管理者来说，每一个决策都受到政策、程序、法律、惯例等方面的制约，这些制约存在于一个组织的各个部门里。
选项就是可供选择的种种可行的行动方案。没有选项，就没有选择，因而也就没有决策。如果看不到任何选项，这意味着还没有对问题进行彻底的研究。例如，管理者有时会用“非此即彼”的方式处理问题，这是他们简化问题的方法。这种简化问题的习惯常常使他们看不到其他的选项。
在管理这个层次上，制定决策包括：识别选项和缩小选项范围，其范围小到微乎其微，大到近乎无限。
决策者必须有某种方法来断定几种选项中的最佳选项，即哪个选项最有利于实现其组织的目标。组织的目标是指该组织努力完成或达到的目标或现状。由于个人(或组织)对于怎样实现其目标的方式都有不同的见解，最佳的选择就在于决策者了。常常是一个组织的下属部门做出的决策对自己有利，而对上一级的部门来说，就不是较佳选择了。这种增加部门的局部利益而减少其他部门的局部利益所作出的权衡，叫做局部优化。例如，市场营销经理为增加广告预算可能会讲得头头是道，但从更大的布局来看，增加优化产品的研究经费也许对组织更有利。
这种权衡的存在是因为组织想要同时达到的目标很多，其中有些比另一些重要，但其重要性与排序是因人和部门而异的。不同的管理者会对同一问题持不同的看法。面对同样一种情况时，销售经理倾向于销售方面的问题，而生产经理则着眼于生产方面的问题，如此等等。
多种目标的重要性与排序还部分地取决于决策者的价值观,这些价值观具有个人色彩,令人难以捉摸,甚至其本人也很难讲清楚，因为价值观是动态和复杂的,在很多业务场合,对于风险与收益可接受的程度往往会使不同价值观的人对其决策的正确性产生不同意见。
人们常常认为，决策是一个孤立的现象。但从系统的观点看，问题的产生有多种原因，而且决策有预期的和意料之外的结果。一个组织是一个发展中的实体，今天做出的决策可能会在很远的将来才会有结果。因此，老练的管理人员要放眼于当前决策在将来可能会产生的后果。
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