um term planning like hiring and firing personnel, purchasing equipment, training individuals and modifying procedures.
- Long term planning like replacing subcontractors, redesigning production facilities and modifying capacity (Copeland, 1986).
Importance of Debate
Although decision-making and problem solving occurs at different levels of a company, leaders are ultimately responsible for every business decision and this requires a leader to have an understanding of strategic, tactical and operational decisions. Further, decision making rests not only on what decisions are made, but who makes them and how they are made. Business decisions often require an inquiry process, developing and debating a number of ideas in order to find the best course of action. This approach to decision making is a test of strength among competing ideas (Garvin, 2001).
In order to encourage debate and a free exchange of ideas, a leader needs to have a high level of emotional intelligence so that he or she can manage conflict that invariably arises in such an environment. Some leaders have a tendency to make decisions that are not based on sound reasoning while other decision makers can be rigid in their dealings with other people. However, leaders that exercise emotional intelligence can motivate people to be creative and to realize a vision (Batool, 2013). In the end, a decision-making process that relies on debating a number of ideas should strive for a balance and a number of factors.
Successful leaders are flexible and open to the ideas of others, but also adhere to a set of core values — essentially an internal determination regarding what a company's goals and aspirations are and how they plan to achieve them. At the same time, decisions must be made with an awareness of the outside world — leaders and managers must be capable of knowing what the truth is outside of the organization. This means understanding what factors are affecting the market. Understanding these factors will allow for good strategic decisions. Further, decision makers need to understand how that market is changing and to what extent the business can contribute to those changes. Such an understanding will lend itself to good tactical decisions. Finally, everyone involved in the decision-making process must understand what the company needs to do in order to be successful in that market as this will result in effective operational decisions (Unseem, 2005).
In the end, all levels of decision-making — strategic, tactical and operational, require access to accurate information. By having accurate information, leaders and managers will be better equipped to make decisions that are based on facts, sound reasoning and intelligence. This information can also be thought of as business intelligence. Effectively employing business intelligence will enable leaders to provide managers with the right information at the right time. Having the right information will ensure that decisions will be based on facts and allow for decisions to be made more quickly. Moreover, because business intelligence relies on factual information, it encourages a rational approach to management (Abukari, 2003).
Importance of Business Intelligence
Most businesses exist to provide goods and services to their customers and this requires decisions on how to deliver those goods, pricing, the handling of unsatisfied customers, and how to treat repeat or high volume customers (Rhode, 2005). Such decisions require "mission critical business intelligence" and there are technologies that enable businesses to understand "customer buying behaviors and preferences," "product pricing and promotion" and "product assortment." By evaluating this information, a business is better able to make operational decisions (Ross, 2007, p. 25)....
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