Planning and decision making pdf

Planning 6 Embed Size px. Start on. Show related SlideShares at end. WordPress Shortcode. Share Email. Top clipped slide. Business , Education. Download Now Download Download to read offline. Planning and decision making Download Now Download Download to read offline. Ashish Pillai Follow. Assistant Professor. Chapter 5 planning and decision making.

Planning and decision making. Marketing Management Module 1. What is marketing. Related Books Free with a 30 day trial from Scribd. Related Audiobooks Free with a 30 day trial from Scribd. Empath Up! Joana Jaen Selga.

Mohamoud Ahmett. Manish Pant. Aruba Ahmad. This emphasis on planning is not something very recent, but has evolved over the years because of two factors: i Planning has indeed become specialised, being applied to more and more aspects of our business and personal lives. Btlt if you ask why it is essential, the answer is simple.

Planning can be described "as the process through wbich we determine how best to commit present available resources in oriicr to influence future events. Sound planning for the future leads" us to sound Wision Making. The Unit also takes into account certain other aspects related to Decision Malung:. All these aspecti are the parts of the process which determines in advance the future accomplishmentsand the means to achieve them.

For a manager it means, clearly putting down the actions which he or she intends to take for achieving the organisational goals.

For an entrepreneur it means drawing a blue print of the activities to be undertaken for establishing the business anticipated problems, etc. However, the nature and scope of planning varies as per the leve of the manager. For example, an escort may plan for the day tour or the group's total tow but the tour operator will plan for packaging the tour, marketing it and catering to the group etc. Here, you should also remember that planning is needed primarily for two reasons: I.

Committing and allocating an organisation's this can be your own business or the company you work in available resources for achieving its stated goals, and. Planning also implies: making choices from the diverse available opportunities, and a time limit for achieving the goals.

For your own clarity you should take note of the features of planning. Planning is: a process rather than behaviour at a given point of time. It is the process which I determines the future course of action.

I I concerned basically with the future and requires forecasting of the future situation. This is because all levels of management are concerned with the determination of the future course of action.

As such an adjustment is needed between the various factors and planning. Here one must take note of the advantages of planning: you can direct the activities in an orderly way for achieving the goal, unproductive work and wastage can be minimised, proper resource allotment can be done, better utilization of available resources is possible, problems and competition, etc.

At the same time certain disadvantages of planning have also been pointed out like: predictions cannot always be accurate; planning makes you work in a preconceived framework and discourages initiative and innovation; planners overdo their job; some feel planning is only theoretical, etc.

You should remember that the magnitude of planning is too vast in managerial tasks. You need a plan to organise, mobilise, allocate, operationalise, finance, market compete, monitor,contrd, improve,change or innovate, etc. Within that, every unit or department has its own plans and so on. Generally, plans can be of two types:. Strategic plans are devised to meet the organisational goals whereas, operational plans are l devised to implement the strategic plans.

However, above al these is the mission statement which defines the organisation's goals. For an organisation's growth it is imperative that operational plans reflect the strategic plan. For example the various regional managers of the Deparlment of tourism make promotional plans for their regions, but the guiding factor for them are the principles metioned in the strategic plan designed by the Department of tourism. However, it must be remembered here that strategic plans have a long span of time compared to operational plans.

For example, as a tour operator you may have a strategic plan to cater to groups of tourists in a five year time. To achieve this target you may have operational plans for catering co 20 groups in a year. Similarly, your strategic plan will cover a broad range of organisational activities whereas your operational plan will have a limited scope. It is interesting to note that your simple strategic goal of groups leads to complex operational plannhg, takiig into account your marketing strategies, linkages, infrastructure, etc.

Strategic plans decide the aims and policies of the organisation. Accordingly, the programmes and methods for their fulfilment are also detailed. Once this is done, at any given time, questions like where the organisation stands or where it intends to go, are answered by the strategic plan. But how the organisation will get there is answered by thc operational plans. For formulating a strategic plan you can begin with asking the following questions: What service is to be provided by you?

What sort of competition do you have? What are the resources and infrastructural needs? What kind of social, economic or political environment is there? What unique features you offer? Though, such strategic planning may not predict your future but surely a strategic plan enables you meet future contingencies; correct errors; take timely decisions and avoid. Operational planning determines the tasks to be accomplished, determines responsibility, allocates resources and sets measurements for every task.

Besides these two types of plans, there are certain other types of plans dealt with by managers in their routine. These may involve individual activity, departmental activity or entire organisationalactivity. Such plans are related to policy matters,procedures, methodologies, qualityassurance, budgets,projects or technologies. You must remember here that planning. In a service industry like tourism it is essential that not only the top or middle managers but the employees also plan their activities keeping in view the organisationalgoals.

This will add to their efficiency. Not only individuals, partners or organisationsdo their planning, but today there are professionals who as consultants make plans for organisations. Planning requires certain skills like the ability to: think ahead, forecast future trends, state organisational goals, choose strategies, and ;prive at performance standards, etc.

Planners must be able to determine the framework of purpose for the organisation. There is always a multiplicity of objectives like: profitability, growth, turnover, social responsibility survival, continuity, etc.

The organisation's objectives are identified and articulated in a mission statement. The mission statement should be such that it clarifies: the nature of the organisation, in what business the organisation is, what the long term objectives are, what are the short term objectives, and the methods to be adopted for achieving these objectives.

A mission statement is relevant for big as well as small organisations and for both profit making as well as non profit making organisations. This is because the various factors that go into the planning process may differ from plan to plan or from one organisation to another.

But with minor modifications the following planning process is appliwble to all types of plans. You may use a similar sequence of steps for formulating a plan. This structure leads to the translation of your ideas into action by reaching to the state of establishing the sequences of activities.

The contribution of each stage in the plammg process is given below: 1. Perception of opportunities includes: a preliminary look at possible opportGnities and the abity to see them clearly and completely, a knowledge of where the organisation stands in the light of its strength and weaknesses, an understanding of why the organisation wants to solve uncertainities, and a a vision of what is expected to be gained.

Major organisational and unit objectives are set at this stage. They specify the results expected and indicate the end points of: what is to be done, where the primary emphasis is to br, placed, and what is to be accomplished by various types of plans.

Planning premises are planning assumptions - the expected environment and internal conditions. Thus planning premises are both, external as well as internal: External premises include total factors in task environment like political, social, technological, competitors' plans and actions, government policies, etc. The selected alternatives are then reduced so that the most promising ones may be taken for detailed analysis. The concept of various alternatives suggests that a particular objective can be achieved through various actions.

Evaluation of Alternatives:. At this stage, an attempt is made to evaluate how each alternative contributes to the organisational objectives in the light of its resources and constraints. Choice of Alternatives:. Once the alternatives are evaluated, the one which fits best in the organisation is selected. In case, of more than one alternative fitting the organisational needs and constraints, the planner should choose more than one alternative.

This provides the flexibiity to the plan and the contingency plan i. Formulation of Supporting Plans:. Once the basic plan is formulated, various plans are derived so as to support the main plan. These derivative plans are formulated out of the main plan and, therefore, they support it. The emergence of intelligent systems logical, economic, and sociological issues Karacapi- makes accessible valuable resources to practitioners, lidis et al.

Without such tools, DMs and stake- decision-making process Zhu et al. This restoration strategies to meet watershed restoration assessment generally requires the simultaneous con- objectives Moualek, ; Stam et al. Public agencies generally look for a pre- to assist stakeholders and DMs in watershed restora- ferred solution that trades off the achievement of one tion planning and prioritization. The DSS was devel- objective against another objective Salminen et al.

Willamette Valley. This paper presents the rationale The tradeoff assessment often becomes a personal for integrating the elements mentioned previously value question and requires the subjective judgment into a decision-making methodology and its related of the DMs Keeney and Raiffa, ; Clemen, In the context of our study, we tion decision making.

The informa- The conceptual framework that we present here tion required by the DM is obtained before the formu- aims to contend with the inadequacies of decision- lation of the mathematical model. These methods are making tools applied to watershed restoration deci- fairly simple to use, since typically the multiple- sion problems. It integrates and makes use of existing objective problem is reduced to a single-objective decision-making approaches and techniques and GIS problem Mollaghasemi and Pet-Edwards, Sev- technologies, and it exploits wide-ranging models to eral methods exist for prior articulation of preferences support a holistic approach to watershed restoration MODM, such as the Simple Additive Weighted planning.

SAW has few input The participation of stakeholders in identifying rel- requirements from the DMs; it is flexible and easy to evant data, models, and decision-making criteria is interpret. It is one of the simplest MODM methods crucial for building a DSS tool that can express their and one of the most popular Triantaphyllou and Lin, objectives and preferences.

For that purpose, we part- ; Mollaghasemi and Pet-Edwards, These watersheds ning Jenkins, , planning of water resources were selected for 1 their diversity, one being a larger sharing Avogadro et al. The phic, and socioeconomic conditions; and 3 the avail- spatial nature of environmental management prob- ability of a number of spatially explicit data sets lems suggests that a DSS be developed and imple- capable of supporting the types of analyses envisioned mented using GIS technology combined with models in this project.

The South Santiam watershed and decision-making techniques. The watershed is the main source of DSSs for watershed restoration planning seem to city drinking water.

While substantially modified involve a more active participation of the DMs and since the s, the South Santiam is a less disturbed greater integration of knowledge coming from the ecological system. The Long Tom watershed is much DMs, community, experts, scientists, and practition- more urbanized as it is adjacent to Oregon's second- ers involved in the planning activity. Many of the largest metropolitan area, Eugene-Springfield.

It is DSSs applied to watershed management focus on more disturbed by agricultural and urban activities sharing information and presenting synthesized and and has been the site of a number of conflicts related comprehensive information to the users Allen et al. Other DSSs focus only on one or two problematic issues in the watershed or a few restoration projects A1-Rashdan et al.

To date, significant efforts have been placed on information organization, modeling, and analysis rather than on decision making issues Avogadro et al.

The discipline of decision making requires the development of an integrated watershed restora- tion DSS that can help DMs through the entire evalu- ation process Demissie and Tidrick, Figure 1.

Location of Study Area. This first step of the holistic activity, gathering information from a wide methodology is to clearly define the nature of the sys- variety of disciplines and synthesizing, exploring, and tem under consideration, and to develop a shared developing that information based on a DM's objec- knowledge and perception of the decision problem.

To assist this process, we developed a concerns the quality of drinking water, which may be decision-making methodology, shown in Figure 2. The threatened by industrial waste and urban and agri- overall objective of this methodology, and more specif- cultural runoff. The context should be described in ically of the decision-making tool, RESTORE, is to terms of social, economic, biological, and hydrologic help the DMs understand, dissect, and structure the issues.

We hypothesize that this ability will through its GIS-based module, the data and informa- improve the rationality of the decision-making pro- tion on which the system is based, facilitating the cess, and therefore its quality. This approach is based problem definition. A cell ranging from 0. The cells are built on the ing. The role of RESTORE is to provide insight into assumption that small landscape areas can be aggre- the decision problem by reducing the cognitive gated into individual units that are homogeneous resources the users need to make choices among the with respect to land use, soil, and drainage.

Each cell is color coded to a restoration options that could be used to address specific land use. A cell's properties table portrays the the DMs' objectives. Each cell is shaded with a color that corresponds to a specific land use identified in the legend.

Explicit pre- Restoration Options sentation of objectives makes DMs conscious of their own and others' perspectives. The main outcome of this step is an increased understanding of the deci- The watershed council sets the objectives and the sion problem for the DMs, the community, the restoration options used to develop the preferred experts, or any interested parties French et al.

A restoration option is a Focus group meetings, content analysis of site modification or change in management that newsletters and meeting minutes, and discussions addresses one or more stakeholder objectives.

Exam- with watershed council leaders helped in identifying ples include installation of a riparian buffer along a the five main objectives, the 28 subobjectives, and the water course or reducing toxicant use on agricultural 20 restoration options presently used in RESTORE fields. Options applied at specific sites are used as Figure 4.

Objectives reflect stakeholder goals when con- DMs to a constrained set of watershed restoration sidering restoration planning, and in RESTORE these objectives, subobjectives, or options. In the following example Fig- Identification of Attributes That Relate to Each ure 5 , we illustrate one set of priorities and concerns.

Objective Here, water quality and water quantity are among five primary concerns or objectives reflecting interest Attributes are site-based decision variables that in the subobjectives of decreasing water temperature need to be considered by RESTORE when directing and runoff, conserving water and increasing stream the selection of specific restoration options.

These are flows, improving nutrient management, and protect- qualitative or quantitative measures used to charac- ing drinking water and wells. These concerns are fol- terize a site with respect to its potential to support lowed closely by interest in socioeconomic issues, various restoration options. They may be given by a including education and outreach, social networking, model, measured directly, or assessed subjectively and greater community involvement.

Maintaining Mollaghasemi and Pet-Edwards, The weights given to the five objec- able. These data are brought together in a GIS and tives are: water quality objective weight, 0.

Exam- weight, 0. All of the restoration options ty to landscape features such as wetlands, roads, that are listed in the left part of the user screen are streams, and urban areas. Detaed information about each objective is given it corresponding tab. Creeksidejv1anagement i To run the restorations opons JAg Definition of the Rules and Constraints that are an intuitive way to represent knowledge.

A collection of rules has the ability to represent differ- ent sources of knowledge in a consistent format. Once objectives and attribute data are identified, All rules provide a conclusion describing a positive the next step is to organize important relationships or negative impact of a specific restoration option at between entities in the system. For example, the following rule assesses the efficacy of an "agricultural riparian different restoration options as a function of the cell's buffer" for meeting the water quality objective.

If constraints are satisfied, applicable rules score different restoration options THEN effectiveness of an "agricultural riparian based Ofl the options' ability to meet each objective. For instance, the efficient option that best rules describing the utility of various restoration addresses the concerns identified in Step 2 for Cell options at meeting restoration objectives under vari- was an agricultural riparian buffer.

This cell is ous site conditions. The agricultural riparian buffer option obtained scores of 4, 1, 4, 3. Since the weights given to the objectives tions that will simultaneously meet multiple objec- were respectively 0.

To do so, the SAW method is used to rank, for posite score after weights normalization equals 2. These scores preferences described previously. The SAW method emphasize the fact that an agricultural riparian uses the following equation to evaluate the efficacy buffer option was selected for Cell mainly due to V of the xth alternative.

In Equation 1 , v corresponds to the scores resulting from the decision rules' output. We assume The final output of RESTORE is a spatially and that the objectives are mutually independent, a visually explicit preferred proposed landscape.

A pre- requirement for the SAW additive structure. The pri- ferred proposed landscape should be viewed as the orities assigned to each objective are denoted as DM's preferred watershed restoration plan, integrat- weights w. The goal of the SAW method is to score ing a mix of restoration options that are optimal or the utility of each restoration option at meeting multi- near optimal at addressing the various objectives of ple objectives.

However, the preferred watershed restora- rank the restoration options for a site and select the tion plan cannot be developed in the first run.

Rather, highest scoring option. For a typical watershed, more than 15, cells the previous section. We visual evaluations of the proposed landscapes. They hypothesize that the use of the SAW method com- can look at different combinations of information lay- bined with a rule-based approach can generate a rep- ers and perform multiple-scale analyses of the gener- resentative subset of efficient proposed landscapes. In ated proposed landscapes.

The largest portion of the screen is devoted to cannot be dominated by another plan Bogetoft and the map. Each cell is shaded with a color that corre- Pruzan, Based on the set of objectives and sponds to a specific restoration option in the legend.

The restoration options to "create condi- ation of an efficient proposed landscape and, by vary- tion favorable to native species," "forest harvest type ing the weights associated with each objective, to scale modification," "agricultural chemical BMPs," generate a representative subset of efficient proposed "increase late summer flow," and "wetlands construc- landscapes.

The results include a composite score and the scores that relate to each objective. Scores describe the efficacy of the restoration option at reaching the DM's objectives. The multiple-objective optimization Selection of the Preferred Watershed Restoration method being developed uses the SAW method for the Plan same reasons that were expressed previously.

The objectives and decision variables that are used at the Selecting a preferred watershed restoration plan is watershed level are different than the ones used at an iterative process.

It is critical that several solu- the cell level, since key issues and observed processes tions be considered simultaneously to keep the DMs vary per spatial scale. Therefore, evaluative models aware that there is no claim that any one of these is were developed to look at the patterns, structure, and the preferred watershed restoration plan French, functions of the proposed landscapes.

Such models The process is completed when the DMs are allow the user to explore the effects of landscape char- satisfied with the preferred watershed restoration acteristics on the fundamental processes observed at plan, that is, when they feel that the analysis is requi- the watershed level and to assess how effective each site.

We 1 a learning environment enabling all those involved present the features of a DSS for watershed restora- to develop a more holistic view of watershed restora- tion being implemented and validated in two Oregon tion planning, 2 the capability of structuring and watersheds.

The questions addressed in this paper articulating problems, and 3 the automation of the are: 1 What are the socioeconomic and environmen- decision-making process. Our approach also demon- tal impacts of the different restoration options as a strates a GIS-based approach where rule-based mod- function of landscape position? It does not answer these specific questions, we present a method- depend on proprietary software or commercial simula- ology and a decision-making tool that generate a tion models that may be difficult for users to under- mix of restoration options in the form of a watershed stand, and its use does not require knowledge of specific RESTORE components.

The rule-based approach was by providing a test bed for exploration, it raises a selected because it allows flexible representation of variety of ideas and questions for future research in knowledge and is relatively easy to maintain and the development of DSS tools that address watershed modify. A MODM module creates a final ranking of restoration in a holistic way.

We hypothesized that, when used properly, our methodology allows DMs to explore a environmental criteria. The proposed landscape that broad range of drivers and consequences. The best addresses the watershed restoration objectives is selected as the DM's preferred watershed restoration RESTORE methodology helps to identify and explore possible solutions. It leads to a better understanding plan. The decision-making framework does not limit of the impacts of decisions.

DMs and experts were the DM to a constrained set of watershed restoration objectives or options; instead, it offers a framework involved throughout the development process. They have been consulted on the main assumptions under- for almost limitless possibilities to configure a wide pinning the system and on the choices embodied in variety of alternative watershed restoration plans the system.

Our experiences tell us that the perspec- that meet selected objectives. However, to confirm or refute this methodology. It is broad enough to accommodate a first impression, a complete assessment of the deci- wide variety of decision situations, thus stimulating sion-making system must be done to evaluate how collaboration between DMs.

Map-based and textual useful it is and whether it can promote decision-mak- summaries of restoration decision-making are readily ing in a watershed restoration context. They are a useful and meaningful way of presenting both attribute informa- tion and decision results. The authors wish to express their appreciation to the Long Tom We see our modeling process as iterative and and South Santiam Watershed Councils for their creativity and dynamic.

We extend special thanks to and experts to make improvements to the decision- Dana Erickson, Sue Gries, and Cindy Thieman for assisting us in making tool and to each step of the decision-making our interactions with the watershed councils. This work was sup- methodology.