MBA503 Operations Management and Decision-Making Models Report 3 Sample
Your task
Individually, you are required to record a video in which you must address a company board. During this webinar, you are to provide advice and reflections about the decision-making processes followed during a recent organisational crisis experienced by this company.
Assessment Description
This assessment involves students choosing a real-life example of an organisational crisis. This will be used as a case study. An organisational crisis is a significant, essentially unexpected event that threatens the company’s reputation, financial standing and/or ability to operate. Examples of organisational crises include; natural disasters, security breaches, fraud, product recalls and environmental spills. The crisis students choose needs to be discussed, negotiated and approved by their workshop facilitator. This assessment will allow you to demonstrate an application of strategies integrating ethical, social and global considerations, which benefit organisational performance. The assessment will further help students exhibit analytical and evaluation skills about real-world situations using a wide variety of decision-making approaches and techniques.
Assessment Instructions
Imagine that you are employed as a consultant who has expertise in effective decision-making and that you have been asked to review the decision-making processes followed during the crisis you picked as a case study. The webinar should include a short overview of the crisis and then answer the following three questions:
1) What decision-making models or approaches were used by the company when managing this crisis? In answering this question, refer to 1 (one) decision-making model which could have been followed.
2) Identify a minimum of 2 (two) decision-making biases or errors that might have influenced the decisions made. What could have been the impact of these biases or errors?
3) Make a minimum of 2 (two) recommendations regarding the strategies that could be put in place in the future to avoid your identified decision-making biases or errors.
A minimum of 5 academic references should be used to support the statements made and arguments presented in this video.
To ensure the success of your video presentation, you should take account of the following:
• Ensure that you record in a well-lit location and quiet location so that the quality of your video is enhanced.
• Confirm that your voice is recording, avoiding reading notes, and looking at the camera when you speak.
• Practice numbers times beforehand so that you become polished and confident.
• Be creative in how you present your information and reinforce the arguments or positions you are taking.
Please refer to the assessment marking guide to assist you in completing all the assessment criteria.
Solution
Qantas:
Introduction
The global pandemic, or Covid-19, affected almost every industry or company. There are a lot of companies that face huge financial losses. University Assignment Help, Therefore, many had to cut jobs and could not make proper decisions in this critical situation. The current report focuses on Qantas Company and its financial difficulties because of Covid-19. Qantas is an Australian airline which has become the country’s biggest airline of its international destinations, flights and fleet size. This is also the third-oldest airline worldwide. Moreover, the report identified one decision-making model used by the company when managing the crisis. After that, the report discussed two decision-making errors or biases that influenced the company’s decision-making, and the impact of these biases also discusses in the report. At the same time, based on the issues and ignoring the company's decision-making biases, the report suggested two recommendations for Qantas’s future success.
Decision-Making Model
Qantas used a rational decision-making model and an order of logical steps to make an important decision during Covid-19 difficulties. Through this model, the company leveraged the logic, data, and analysis to examine the issues and possible solutions and chose the viable option after careful evaluation (Bag et al. 2021, p. 180). Due to Covid 19 and the strict lockdown, the company lost almost 7 billion Australian dollars and missed around 25 billion Australian dollars in revenue (Saddik, n.d. P. 56). In that critical situation; the company used the rational decision-making model to recover and strategies to overcome the situation.
The company tried to maintain each step of the model. The model usually suggests around five steps. First, the company identified its main problem, financial loss, and then it started to make an effective plan to address the issue. Moreover, the company defined significant and relevant information in decision-making (Acevedo et al. 2021, p. 5566). This means that the company determined the whole decision criteria. For this, the company’s top management set a team meeting where they set and defined the relevant and significant information regarding the crisis. Then, the company decided on the significance of the decision criteria depending on its priorities for its final decision. In this step, the company decided its main priority and needed to make difficult decisions. Based on the priorities, the company listed the potential options to solve the issue and arranged them as the likelihood of feasibility, success, etc. (Bag et al. 2021, p. 180).
The company’s potential option list also included cash flow, loyalty, fleet management, cost saving, employee involvement and customer brand. Finally, the company needed to select the best option to solve its issues and help it to overcome the crisis (Acevedo et al. 2021, p. 5566). In that case, the company finally decided to make certain fundamental changes to its business to survive, and its main focus was to make sure that it would be in a position to recover and repair. The company's final decision was to cut many jobs (Saddik, n.d. P. 56). At the same time, the company mentioned the huge revenue loss, and the decision to job cutting was difficult but necessary.
Two Decision-Making Biases
Certain decisions of Qantas during the Covid crisis impacted the company’s operations and management. These decision-making biases influenced the final made decisions of the company. The two decision-making biases of the company were a two-year pay freeze and thousands of job cutting. The Covid 19 pandemic has changed all management systems in the company. This was tough for the company to make profits (Johnson, 2021, p. 760). In that situation, the company made biased decisions that cut jobs and a two-year salary freeze. The major reason for cutting almost 5800 jobs was cost-saving. The company suddenly announced that it faced a huge loss due to Covod 19, and this was tough for Qantas against the backdrop of its profitability record. For this reason, the company cuts jobs, and that has primarily rankled the union leaders. The eliminated staff of the company felt betrayed (Indiatoday.in, 2023, p. 78). Job losses when it most needed and workers faced the worst situation in their lives. However, the company’s main target was to reduce its costs by around 1 billion dollars annually. At the same time, the company should survive the Covid-19 pandemic, reduce expenses, and raise its fresh capital (Fortune.com, 2023, p. 89).
Furthermore, the company also announced a two-year pay freeze and imposed a voluntary redundancy for the international cabin crew. For this reason, the company faced much criticism, which impacted its reputation. The criticism also included that the company usually took advantage of this crisis and needed to part with certain better-paid cabin crews and reduce the influence on their payment negotiation (Indiatoday.in, 2023, p. 78). One of the cabin crew members of the company mentioned that Qantan mainly used the Covid-19 pandemic and only said how critical the market situation was. Still, the company did not tell the market from it was making money.
The company’s these biased decisions directly impacted the domestic pilots of Qantas. Almost 2500 staff was without salary for almost two months, and then sudden job elimination slashed the domestic demand for travel for the company during its Covid crisis (Saddik, n.d. P. 56). There is no doubt that these decision errors affected the cabin crew, pilots, airport workers, etc. The company mentioned that its domestic flight capacity is from 100 per cent to 40 per cent (Fortune.com, 2023, p. 89). This was something that weighed heavily on the company, and this is something that the company usually did not make unbiased decisions easily. However, the collapse of billions in ots revenue left the company with little selection if the company required to save many jobs, possibly for the long term.
Recommendations
During the pandemic, the company Qantas faces financial loss because of their biasness in decision making. There are two ways which help to remove biases in decision-making, such as the SPADE framework and seeking multiple perspectives.
The SPADE Framework
The company should use the SPADE framework, which effectively removes biases in decision-making. In the SPADE framework, S is denoted as the Setting, defined as the problem and wants to clarify the reason. The company if should know the reason for biasness so and, they should try to solve the problem. P is referred to as People (Defard et al, 2021, p. 480). Identifying the people who input to participate in the decision-making process is important. To follow the framework, the company should identify the people who input them into the decision-making process to take a decision (Jiang et al, 2022, p. 462).
The company should identify people, which is the first approach. When the company should identify people, it is easy to solve biases in the decision-making. A is defined as an Alternative. It is important to have a diverse and feasible alternative. The company should be responsible for finding diverse and feasible alternatives (Jiang et al, 2022, p. 462). As a result, it should help the company to remove biases. From the same point of view, the company should gather stakeholders and brainstorm alternatives as much as possible. In addition, D is referred to as Decide in the SPADE framework (Defard et al, 2021, p. 480).
The company should get feedback from others and give them a vote on their choice. From the same point of view, the company should keep this private with the help of using tools such as text, email, and Slack (Jiang et al, 2022, p. 462). To remove the biases in the decision-making, the company should conduct polls on a selected topic. E is referred to as Explain in this framework. The company should decide with the help of a committee meeting.
Seek Multiple Perspectives
This is the most effective and simple way to help remove any bias in decision-making to feedback from other employees and solicit advice. The company should increase trust among employees in the workplace (Bellan et al, 2022, p. 3360). So, employees should offer honest feedback and point out blind spots. As a result, the company should get fresh points of view from others, which helps to remove biases.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said the global pandemic rapidly changed almost every industry, including the airline industry. In that situation, Australian airline Qantan was not exceptional. The company also faced a huge financial loss due to the Covid 19. During the crisis, the company made certain biased decisions that also critically impacted the company. However, there might be certain positive impacts, or the company might achieve the cost-saving target. The current report was based on the company's decision-making model and its biased decisions. It highlighted that the company used a rational decision-making model. Based on the issues and biased decisions, the report also provided two effective recommendations for the company's future success and removed the decision-making biases. The report suggested that the company should use the SPADE framework, and Qantan also needs to seek multiple perspectives during its decision-making. These suggestions may help the company ignore decision biases during future crises.
References
Acevedo, RA, Aponte, E, Harmath, P and Mora Mora, J, (2021) ‘Rational irrationality: A two stage decision making model’, Journal of Advances in Decision Science, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 5566-6000.https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/86882/acevedo_article.pdf?sequence=3
Bag, S, Gupta, S, Kumar, A and Sivarajah, U, (2021) ‘An integrated artificial intelligence framework for knowledge creation and B2B marketing rational decision making for improving firm performance’, Industrial Marketing Management, vol.no. 92, pp.178-189. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/am/pii/S0019850120309044
Bellan, P, Dragoni, M and Ghidini, C (2022) ‘Leveraging pre-trained language models for conversational information seeking from text’, arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.03542, pp. 3355-6600. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.03542
Defard, T, Setkov, A, Loesch, A and Audigier, R (2021, March) ‘Padim: a patch distribution modeling framework for anomaly detection and localization’, In Pattern
Recognition. ICPR International Workshops and Challenges: Virtual Event, January 10–15, 2021, Proceedings, Part IV, (pp. 475-489). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.08785
Fortune.com. How Qantas became one of the world’s most financially secure airlines during a pandemic. Available at: https://fortune.com/2021/06/26/qantas-australia-airline-covid-success-domestic-travel/ (Accessed February 8, 2023)
Indiatoday.in. Covid-19 impact: Australia’s Qantas airline to cut 6,000 jobs as virus hits. Available at: https://www.indiatoday.in/business/story/covid-19-impact-australia-qantas-airline-to-cut-6-000-jobs-as-virus-hits-1692493-2020-06-25 (Accessed February 8, 2023)
Jiang, J, Li, Y, He, B, Hooi, B, Chen, J and Kang, JKZ (2022) ‘Spade: A Real-Time Fraud Detection Framework on Evolving Graphs’, Proceedings of the VLDB Endowment, vol. 16, no. 3, pp.461-469.https://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol16/p461-jiang.pdf
Johnson, J, (2021) ‘Who Do Qantas Believe Are Their Most Important Stakeholders?: Does COVID-19 Change Anything?’, Does COVID-19 Change Anything, pp. 700-800.https://europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr394673
Saddik, ST, (n.d.) ‘The Financial Impact of COVID-19 on Airline corporations: The case of Qantas Airline’, pp. 600-700. https://jcrbaes.press/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/IMPACT-OF-COVID19-on-AIRLINE-.pdf
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