Microsoft Corporation’s Decision-Making Strategy Essay

The Importance of Improving the Decision-Making Process

Nowadays, it becomes increasingly clear for managers that the task of improving the organization’s performance can no longer be addressed within the context of a conventional management paradigm, which implies that the managerial decision-making process cannot be discussed in terms of a ‘thing in itself’ (Bazerman & Moore, 2009).

This is the reason why, as of today, it became a commonplace practice among managers not only to be concerned with increasing the efficiency of the organization’s performance per se, but also with adopting a new outlook on what should be considered a circumstantially appropriate approach towards ensuring a high-quality management, on their part.

The validity of this statement can be well illustrated in regards to the managerial paradigm, adopted by Microsoft Corporation. For example, unlike what it continues to be the case in many other commercial organizations, Microsoft’s employees are not being ‘supervised’, in the traditional sense of this word.

Instead, they are being provided with an opportunity to plan their working schedules on their own, without having to remain thoroughly observant of the company’s corporate rules and regulations (Klein, Schmeling & Blanck, 2005).As a result, Microsoft continues to be considered one of the world’s most successful commercial enterprises.

Apparently, the company’s top officials are being aware of observing the ‘understand biases in others’ managerial principle. This is why, instead of striving to ensure the employees’ ‘compliance’ with the applied rules and regulations, Microsoft’s managers instead aim at creating objective preconditions for workers to be ‘accommodated’ with the company’s corporate values. In its turn, this implies the company officials’ awareness of the so-called Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) of management, which stresses out the importance of adopting a proper approach towards the very process of how managerial decisions are being made (Checkland, 2000).

The Organization Benefits From the Use of the Decision-Improvement Strategy

When it comes to ensuring the effectiveness of a managerial process, it is also crucially important for employers to provide employees with an opportunity to have their work-related opinions/recommendations to be taken into consideration by their immediate superiors. The reason for this is apparent – maintaining the integrity of the applied feedback and listening strategies is an integral part of increasing the extent of the organization’s operating competitiveness (O’Rourke, 2013). The consequential phases of my personal listening strategy can be outlined as follows:

1. Encouraging employees to elaborate on what they consider represents a proper approach towards improving a particular aspect of the organization’s performance.
2. Identifying a common theme of employees’ elaborations, in this respect.
3. Identifying cultural/cognitive factors, which affected the manner in which employees provided their feedback.
4. Presenting employees with guidelines, as to how they may go about ensuring their emotional comfortableness with the suggested transformation-plan, which in turn is supposed to increase the extent of their workplace-accommodation.

I believe that, as a manager, I will succeed in implementing the earlier mentioned strategy. The rationale behind this suggestion is based upon what I consider the specifics of my listening habits:

1. I always assume that employees are able to expose a new discursive dimension to just about every discussed subject matter, concerned with increasing the effectiveness of the organization’s performance.
2. I believe in the beneficence of a free flow opinions between managers, on the one hand, and employees, on the other.
3. I adhere to the idea that multicultural workplaces cannot be managed in the ‘authoritarian’ (euro-centric) manner.

References

Bazerman, M. & Moore, D. (2009). Judgment in managerial decision making (7th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publications.

Checkland, P. (2000). Soft systems methodology: A thirty year retrospective. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 17 (3), 11-58.

Klein, D., Schmeling, J. & Blanck, P. (2005). Emerging technologies and corporate culture at Microsoft: a methodological note. Behavioral Sciences & the Law, 23 (1), 65-96.

O’Rourke, J. (2013). Management communication: A case-analysis approach (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.