Management Control pp 135-162 | Cite as
What is a Decision?
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Abstract
Let us now return to the theme of viewing the management task as a control process. We have seen how the manager can be regarded as a controller employing a closed loop process, how he can monitor the behaviour of the system and how he communicates with parts of the system and with his fellow controllers. In Chapter 1 the controller is identified as a decision maker, since it is through his decisions transmitted to the system that he can adjust its performance and steer it along a desirable course. A decision is the culmination of the control process, the final stage in the analysis of information and the evaluation of possible courses of action. In Chapter 1 a brief classification of various types of decisions is suggested, but let us now turn our attention to the decision process itself. What is a decision? To what extent is it and can it be routinised and mechanised? These are the questions which occupy us in this chapter and in the next one.
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References
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