OPERATION ANALYSIS AND PLANNING QUESTION BANK 1.

Critique the theories of decision making and discuss their applicability to different organizational situations in the hospitality industry. 2. Discuss the theory of bounded rationality from a psychological perspective. 3. Compare the characteristics of soft systems analysis (Peter Checkland, 1981) to that of hard systems analysis in solving organizational problems and their role in improving the quality of decision making. 4. Discuss the role of systems thinking approach in assisting managers in hospitality organizations to analyse and resolve operational problems. 5. Evaluate the extent to which Sigmund Freuds psychodynamic approach to decisions help the makers identify and find explanations for behaviour of individuals. 6. Elucidate the range of factors associated with the problems of perception and how it would impact upon individual decision making. 7. Compare the drawbacks and advantages of group cohesiveness and group diversity in decision making in modern organizations. 8. Critique the concept of group think as identified by Janis (1982) and comment on the pros and cons of such activity in modern hospitality organizations. 9. Critique the role of organizational structure in decision making and the implications in terms of managerial style. 10. Analyse the relevance of organizational climate and culture on decision making in organizations. 11. Discuss organizational conflict and politics and evaluate the functions and dysfunctions of such behaviour. 12. Discuss the benefits of simulation and model building as an aid to the simplification of the problem domain. 13. Elucidate how simulation and model building may be used to develop a systematic method for exploring and analyzing the problem domain. 14. Discuss and compare modeling under certainty and modeling under uncertainty.

15. Discuss the use of management accounting techniques to evaluate short term and long term decisions. 16. Discuss Michael Porters (The fiver forces) model to analyse the extent to which it assists organizations in strategic decision making. 17. Business decisions have ethical dimensions. Comment. 18. Explore and provide the ethical dimensions and constraints under which hospitality organization are required to operate and establish how this would contribute to stakeholder expectations. 19. Elucidate the principles of chaos theory and discuss its implications for the decision maker. 20. Suggest how decision makers may use the Chaos theory to make coherent decisions in complex and dynamic conditions.