Extra Practice - Business Decision Making - ثاني ثانوي

وزارة التعليم Ministry of Education 2024-1446 Business Decision Making S1 S2 S3.indb 191 Extra Practice Critical Thinking Questions 1. Ask a family member working for a government or business organization about the organizational structure at their workplace. Can you figure out what kind of structure it is? Try to use the information you get to draw an organizational chart. 2. Suppose that your school has to choose between teaching more science lessons and fewer math lessons; or more math lessons and fewer science lessons. How would you decide? Create a cost-benefit analysis table to show how you reached your decision. 3. Consider a situation where you had a choice to act ethically or unethically. What did you choose? Decision-Making Processes in Organizations 191 30/06/2023 14:28

192 6 Chapter رة ا Ministry of Education 2024-1446 Business Decision Making S1 S2 S3.indb 192 4. Why did you make that decision? What was the outcome? Real Life Independent Challenge 1 You are a part-time salesperson at a bakery and report directly to the owners, Ibrahim and Naif. In addition to selling bakery products, Ibrahim and Naif ask you to help train new employees. Your goal is to become the sales manager at the bakery. The amount of business has grown significantly since you were hired, and you spend time each day battling problems with customers, suppliers, and employees. Ibrahim suggests you complete the chart shown below to determine which problems to battle each day. Assign each of the following problems to a blank area of the chart. Highlight the problem that you should pursue in red font. Few drawbacks Many drawbacks High payoff Low payoff Problem #1 You need to schedule part-time employees to work behind the bakery counter at the retail outlet. You get along well with the employees, but don't like scheduling. The owners are not focused on their retail outlet. Problem #2 Customers are not receiving their orders on time. You have an idea for improving how you deliver bakery products that will cost the bakery a lot of money up front, but could solve this major customer problem. 30/06/2023 14:28

وزارة التعليم Ministry of Education 2024-1446 Business Decision Making S1 S2 S3.indb 193 Problem #3 Customers are also complaining that the bakery products do not stay fresh for long. You need an easy way to keep the bakery cool and deliver the baked goods faster to improve freshness. Problem #4 One supplier often delivers the wrong type of flour to the bakery. You need to talk to the supplier about the problem, but know he has a hot temper and is likely to start a conflict with you. Real Life Independent Challenge 2 Think back to the fishbone diagram in Figure 6-10. Imagine you are an employee of the tour operator, and you need to use adaptive techniques to try to increase sales. 1. Look at the categories of the issues contributing to weak sales. Choose three of the issues that you think would make the biggest contribution to the problem. For each one, research the issue on the Internet and explain your reasons for the choice. 2. There are likely several ways to tackle the issues you chose in question 1. Adaptive techniques say we should try to make incremental changes-adjusting things in logical stages that are easy to reverse if they don't work out. For each of the issues you chose, write a list of five changes you might make, in the order you would try them. 3. In pairs, imagine that one student is a manager and the other is an employee who has been called in for a performance review. Conduct the performance review, Decision-Making Processes in Organizations 193 30/06/2023 14:28

194 6 Chapter رة ا Ministry of Education 2024-1446 Business Decision Making S1 S2 S3.indb 194 thinking carefully about how the manager would assess the employee's performance. What factors might be used? Team Challenge It's important to consider ethics when making decisions within an organization or workplace. Business ethics are essential, but it's also important to consider Islamic ethics in the decisions we make. 1. As a group, decide what you think are the three most important aspects of business ethics. What were your reasons for choosing them? 2. Do the aspects you chose in question 1 match with Islamic ethics? Why? 3. When doing business internationally, you may work with, sell to, or buy from businesses or individuals with different cultural backgrounds. Discuss how staying true to the three aspects you chose in question 1 will enable you to do business ethically. Will there be a conflict? Why not? Be the Critic Imagine a large energy company with over 500 employees. The company has a loose hierarchical organizational structure, but the staff work in open-plan rooms, often next to people who do very different work from them. Job roles are not clearly defined, meaning you might, in a single day, spend time answering phones, attending high-level meetings, opening and sorting through mail, and planning marketing campaigns. Employees are very stressed, but the current structure means that everyone knows something about every aspect of the business. What are the positive aspects of the way the company is run? What are the negatives? Recommend a different organizational structure for the company, explaining in detail how you would organize people, what the new organizational chart would look like, and any other changes you would make to working life. What would the advantages be to the changes you would make? 30/06/2023 14:28