The case of Able Corporation and its subsidy Walden International shows that the decision-making process had a great impact on corporate governance and the effective performance of the corporation. Specialized in portable electric power tools, Able Corporation satisfies a niche on the market interested in its products and unique solutions for both home and professional end-users (Salaman, 2001). Decision-making should reflect planning and control functions of management, meet the needs of both organizations and help them overcome resistance to change and market decline.
In order to improve current relations between Able and Walden International, it is important to evaluate the opportunities and weaknesses of each approach, long-term and short-term approaches. The second step is to develop a unified system of reporting which meets the needs of both Able and Walden International. The third step is to introduce a sole marketing strategy for Able and Walden International based on unique brand image and low cost proposed for all customers (Pittengrew et al 2006). During the development stage the primary task requirement is exploitation of information and resources to achieve efficient internal operations. Information technology could facilitate coordination among group members, forecasting of schedule delays, and external reporting of team progress. By focusing on internal progress and coordination, this technology could help the company shift its emphasis away from exploration. “If information technology is to improve the corporate governance while maintaining favorable group dynamics, care must be taken in how the systems are designed and used” (Salaman, 2001, p. 43).
Critics argue that the design of information technology can benefit from an in-depth understanding of behavior in organizations; in particular, they claim that information technology designs must be based on an adequate consideration of external, as well as internal interactions, and the shifts in task over time. Many of the recent developments in decision-making and leadership have been designed with an internal perspective; that is, they are aimed at improving the processes and interactions among team members. Although this is an extremely valuable goal, such systems may have the unintended consequence of diminishing the interactions with outsiders. Although this system facilitated and simplified communication among the team members, it made communication with nonmembers relatively more difficult (Salaman, 2001).
In order to moderate functional objectives of Walden, and make them work of Able, it is important to redesign the inventory system and introduce a PERT system. This system will help both organizations to allocate tasks and coordinate their processes. The allocation of tasks associated with diagnosing and treating reveals the structure of authority relations in more detail. This monitoring normally includes “routinely interrogating reviews, but its intensity can vary depending on local constraints” (Salaman, 2001, p. 47). That is, because monitoring requires intermittent communication under circumstances where time is at a premium, cases are likely to differ in the extent to which they are reviewed by managers. In general, however, the organization encourages and requires a kind of contest atmosphere in which the communicative and competence and experts can be subjected to routine scrutiny. The manager’s account about the work can be described as an asymmetrical power relationship in which both parties know that the outcome of the plan proposed will be assessed by the attending (Pittengrew et al 2006).
Another important aspect of institutionalized settings is the existence of different substantive and social domains. For example, manufacturing companies have both horizontal and vertical structures, where there are managers with considerable autonomy at the top of a vertical structure that can include a division. Communication is framed and guided by these organizationally defined status and role relationships and by expectations that are locally emergent and managed. Because of their varying positions in this structure individuals are likely to have differential access to evidence, and to experience differential support and resistance from other personnel in their efforts to communicate within and across these domains (Salaman, 2001).
The companies should create unified databases in order to control and manage the sales. The obstacles to the creation of useful data bases and expert systems for control can be mitigated by paying more attention to the way the initial communication process between managers who activates overlapping but distributed cognitive resources for the task at hand. Still, these resources help the manager to bring into being a frame to which memory elements from different experiences and knowledge of basic management concepts can be recruited. The work setting examined briefly includes several problem solving tasks and an institutionalized division of labor that formally specifies the kinds of knowledge background or expertise associated with persons occupying particular positions. In addition, there are the organization goals of training qualified future managers successfully. The success of the system requires feedback from several actors and monitoring and assessing the activities of the staff and other attendings even when judgments are not challenged directly (Teale, 2003).
Decision-making process and governance should be based on strong leadership and effective management. Different individuals collaborate and acquire different yet overlapping cognitive representations of the environments in which they must interact with each other and various technological artifacts. Received knowledge is activated continuously and is simultaneously subject to modification in situations where a high premium is placed on inductive procedures and the credibility of managers and experts. The conditions that can trigger inductions or deductions are contingent on noisy elicitation procedures in which variable circumstances of uncertainty and facticity coexist. For example, the organization of vertical authority structures can create social barriers to the implementation of theoretically valuable expertise and technology (Salaman, 2001). The tacit regularities that frame and guide verbal and nonverbal local interaction influence the way status differences and a differential distribution of knowledge permeate teaching about problem solving and control plans. The organizational regularities and contingencies are conditions that impose limits on the acceptability or usefulness of technologies when the latter possess properties that are inconsistent with the usual way of doing things. Computerized databases designed to aid decisions often lack sufficient information about the local market conditions under which management activity occurs despite claims that such expert systems can reduce the diagnostic workup dramatically (Teale, 2003).
In sum, effective decision-making involves all areas of management and marketing based on successful IT systems and leadership support. The PERT system will be guided by general and local knowledge of marketing structure; this structure provides the framework for the distributed cognition associated with the pursuit of marketing goals. Decision-making should takes into account strategic goals and objectives of both Able Corporation and Walden International in order to keep their unique approaches to marketing and business relations. Still, it has to create effective corporate relations and support marketing teams of both organizations.
References
- Pittengrew, A. M., Thomas, H. Whittington, R. (2006). Handbook of Strategy and Management. Sage Publications.
- Salaman, G. (2001). Making for Business: A Reader. Sage Publications Ltd.
- Teale, M. (2003). Management Decision Making. Financial Times Prentice Hall, London, UK.