杏吧论坛

Prof Valentina Ferretti

This course is available on the BSc in Management, BSc in Psychological and Behavioural Science, International Exchange (1 Term) and International Exchange (Full Year). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Elementary statistical and mathematical concepts, as well as a true curiosity towards the fascinating field of decision making and a strong interest in rebooting your “decision-ware”.

As this course embraces the two key stages of the decision making process, i.e. the initial divergent and creative stage and the subsequent convergent and analytical one, please, note that it is important to feel comfortable with interdisciplinary research, as well as with the use and discussion of both qualitative and quantitative strategies for successful decisions.

This course is about making successful strategic decisions (i.e. challenging decisions that can have important consequences in the short or long term), in both the professional domain and the personal one. Decision making is indeed a central aspect of virtually every management and business activity, including strategic planning, project management, resource allocation, policy making, marketing, operations management, and investment. Knowledge of what it takes to develop a good decision making process is thus an invaluable part of everyone’s toolbox, particularly for rising stars who will be in positions of leadership in the future. This course introduces students to the key concept of decision quality and to cutting edge strategies and tools to integrate data and judgments and develop winning strategies.

This course’s lectures will entail a deep dive into the progressive stages of a strategic decision making process, with interactive experiments and puzzles to develop bias awareness and decision analysis expertise. Seminars will consist of interactive sessions, enabling you to master actionable decision frameworks and become confident decision analysts. The learning outcomes of this course are twofold. First, to discover the key decision traps when framing, structuring and modelling decisions and why they are dangerous. Second, to understand and master cutting edge, replicable and versatile solutions for framing, structuring, modelling and communicating better decisions.

20 hours of lectures and 13 hours and 30 minutes of classes in the LT.

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6, in line with departmental policy.

Two formative assignments:

1. Group project plan presentation (i.e. the selected decision context, due in week 7)

2. Group project pitch of the key decision analysis’ impacts observed as a result of the strategic decision making process developed as a group across classes 2, 3, 4, and 6. Students will present and discuss the key impacts of their decision making process (e.g. discovery of new objectives that were not in their original mental models, recommendation of a different solution to the decision as a result of the used elicitation protocols, etc.) and receive real time feedback, from both their peers and the lecturer. Feedback will be provided following specific criteria (i.e. the same criteria that will be used to evaluate the individual technical account of the group project’s impacts that is summative assignment n.2) and by completing a set of both descriptive and evaluative tasks (e.g. indicating the strongest part of the presentation, as well as parts that need revision, etc.).  The above two formative assignments have been designed to prepare the students for the following two summative works: (i) the group project presentation of the chosen decision making problem/opportunity and (ii) the individual technical account of the group project’s observed impacts.

The topic of the group project (i.e. a decision making problem or opportunity to be modelled and analysed by means of Multicriteria Analysis) can be a personal decision (e.g. which job offer to accept when confronted with multiple ones, which master to apply for, etc.) or a real world case (e.g. how to reduce plastic consumption in the 杏吧论坛 new coffee place). Students will have to collect data, develop and apply a quantitative model, interpret the results and refer to the key scientific literature for the main steps in the development of the model. Students are allowed to work in groups of maximum 4/5 people. This summative assignment will help students develop their strategic problem solving skills by demonstrating their ability to apply both qualitative and quantitative tools to frame, structure and model a decision,  interpret its results, and develop sound recommendations.

In the individual technical account of the group project’s impacts (max 1500 words), students will have to report on the developed process by focusing on the observed key impacts of the used tools.  This second summative assignment will help students develop their critical thinking skills.

Belton, V. and Stewart, T. (2002) Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis. London, Kluwer.

Keeney, R.L. (1992) Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decision-making. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press. HD30.23 K21 (Course Collection).

G.S. Parnell et al. (2013) Handbook of Decision Analysis. Hoboke, Wiley.

Spetzler C., Winter H., Meyer J. 2016. Decision quality: value creation from better business decisions. Wiley.

Group project (40%) in the LT Week 11.
Technical report (60%) in the ST Week 1.

The individual technical report (1500 word maximum) will be on the impacts of the developed group decision making process.

Professor Valentina Ferretti received an 杏吧论坛 Student-led Teaching Excellence Award in the category of Inspirational Teaching for this course in both 2017 and 2018.