Six Decision Steps Part II

Please answer the following:
Listed here are several examples of bad, or at least questionable, decisions. Evaluate the decision maker’s approach or logic. In which of the six decision steps might the decision maker have gone wrong?

(a) Mr. and Mrs. A recently bought a house, the very first one they viewed.

(b) Firm B has invested five years and $6 million in developing a new product. Even now, it is not clear whether the product can compete profitably in the market. Nonetheless, top management decides to commercialize it so that the development cost will not be wasted.

(c) You are traveling on a highway with two traffic lanes in each direction. Usually traffic flows smoothly, but tonight traffic moving in your direction is backed up for half a mile. After crawling for 15 minutes, you reach the source of the tie-up: a mattress is lying on the road, blocking one lane. Like other motorists before you, you shrug and drive on.

(d) The sedative thalidomide was withdrawn from drug markets in 1962 only after it was found to be the cause of over 8,000 birth defects worldwide. (An exception was the United States, where the use of thalidomide was severely restricted).