Judgment in Managerial Decision Making Linear Decision Making

Linear decision making works by looking at, essentially, a "straight line of choices" that involves picking one option even when the future options cannot be seen. This is important to consider, because it allows a person to address a potential issue in a way that requires careful thought. As the person moves down the line of choices, he or she has to decide each time whether to take the presented choice or whether to keep going on the chance that the next choice (or one further up the line) might actually be a better option (Albantakis & Deco, 2009). There is a certain level of risk in this type of decision making, because it is possible that the person will make a decision too soon in the process that will strongly impact the outcome. If the person would have waited, he or she might have been more successful in the way the decision ended up. Of course, the opposite risk is also true, in that it is possible for the person to pass up the best decision while waiting to see if a better choice will come along (Bogacz, et al., 2006).

That would leave the person with a choice that is...

At that point, the person would not be able to go back to any of the better choices, because the decision making is linear (Bogacz, et al., 2006). Backtracking is not allowed or available, and the person would have to simply continue to move forward and hope that future options for decisions are good options. Linear decision making is not the only option, as there are ways to determine which choice to make without using a linear method. However, there are both pros and cons to the linear decision making method and other methods that can be used to choose among a variety of options. When a person decides something in a linear fashion, he or she has to make a number of small decisions that will ultimately culminate in a large decision (Albantakis & Deco, 2009). That can work well for something like whether to choose a parking space or keep looking for one that is closer, but it may not be best for other types of decisions.
A linear decision making model would have helped with a past decision I made regarding whether to take a job offer or hold out for a better one. Instead of waiting to see what kinds of…