Decisions In Paradise: How To Be, Or Not To Be

In the ever-changing world of business, many decisions have to be made, whether the outcome is good or bad. Some of these decisions could be as small as finding a new supplier of pencils, while others could hold the fate of the company. Alex and Nik, business leaders within Wal-mart, must take advantage of all tools and learning experiences in order to become successful in their career paths. One tool that is popular among businessmen and women alike is the decision-making model. The decision-making process is one of the most important skills of today's leading managers while forces and influences depending of the work environment and the type of organization influence this process.

There are many different decision-making models. Managers use specific decision-making styles to make individual decisions within a decision-making model. There are four different styles, the democratic style, the autocratic style, the collective participative style, and the consensus style. Democratic decision-making occurs when the leader gives up ownership and control of a decision and allows the group to vote. Majority vote will decide the action. Advantages include a fairly fast decision, and a certain amount of group participation. The disadvantage of this style includes no responsibility. Lack of group and personal responsibility seems to disqualify this style of decision-making; however, the democratic style does have its place in business (Leadership Management, 1997).

First, the decision-making style used by Alex, Nik, and the upper management within Wal-mart for the situation in Kava was consensus because everyone agreed upon the decision-making model. All parties involved chose the decision-making model cost-benefit analysis and further agreed that any decisions beyond this point would be made by the use of the democratic style. Choosing this style and model would mean that Alex and Nik would prepare the analysis and recommendations and present them to upper management. Only at that time, everyone involved will have the same information in order to vote on the actions they should then be taken to help the people of Kava and Wal-mart as a company. The correct choice and use of any of theses styles and models will determine the success or failure for Alex, Nik, and the project and consequently contribute to the overall success of the Wal-mart Organization.

The cost-benefit analysis is an important technique for project appraisal: the process of weighing the total expected costs against the total expected benefits of one or more actions in order to choose the best or most profitable option. The process will involve monetary calculations of initial and ongoing expenses vs. expected return. However, constructing plausible measures of the costs and benefits of specific actions can be often very difficult (Wikimedia, 2006). Nik and Alex will try to estimate costs and benefits either by using survey methods or by drawing inferences from market behavior.

By the use of the cost-benefit analysis, Alex and Nik will attempt to put all relevant costs and benefits on a common temporal footing. During the cost-benefit analysis, monetary values will be assigned to less tangible effects such as risk, loss of reputation, market penetration, and long-term strategy alignment. In this case, a value must be put on human life or the environment, because of all the catastrophes Kava and its inhabitants have recently experienced. Cost-benefit calculations typically involve using time value