Org. Behavior

1130 Words3 Pages

1. Decision-making On March 31, 1996 the Adventure Consultants and Mountain Madness teams led two of the largest commercial expeditions attempting to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Unfortunately, both of these expeditions would end in tragedy. The failure of these expeditions may be explained, at least partially, by poor decision making. Managers within an organization are tasked with the important responsibility of decision making. The outcomes of managerial decisions can have a serious impact on the organization, clients, shareholders, and even society at-large. In this case, the stakes were extremely high as the organization’s goal was to complete the challenging and dangerous feat of climbing Mt. Everest. The expedition leaders, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, each made problematic decisions that eventually led to their own deaths and the deaths of three expedition members. Other members of the expeditions also exhibited decision making biases that influenced the outcome of this case as well. This section attempts to evaluate the biases that influenced the poor decisions leading to this horrific tragedy. Decision-making differs from the rational-model, which assumes managers make logical and objective decisions using complete information. Often managers face complex and changing environments that affect the decision-making process. Herbert Simon’s Normative Model provides a realistic framework for understanding how managers make decisions. He proposes decision makers are “bounded or restricted by a variety of constraints,” defining bounded rationality (text, p. 241). These constraints can include personality traits of the manager and internal and external resources. Hall and Fischer were faced with several constraint... ... middle of paper ... ...guard of a maximum 2:00 p.m. time limit was designed to motivate the climbers to reach the summit before a mandatory descent. The limit established a burden of responsibility for Hall and Fischer, as they both recognized the inherent difficulties for climbers to decide to turn around after exerting so much time, physical and mental effort, and significant amounts of money to achieve their goals. This was only human nature. In the end the escalation of commitment bias led Hall and Fischer to break their own time limit rule and allow the climbers to scale toward the summit well after 2:00 p.m. Many clients should have decided to, or been ordered to, turn around earlier due to their declining physical conditions. These biased decisions that were made late in the expedition, were the most egregious examples of flawed decision-making that led to a horrible tragedy.

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