1

Table of Contents

Sections Title Page No

Chapter 1. Introduction
1.1 Background and Context 2
1.2 Problem Statement 3
1.3 Research Questions 3
1.4 Research Objectives 3

Chapter 2. Literature
5
2.1 Literature Review
2.1.1 Project Management theory 5
2.1.2 Analytical Hierarchy Process 6
2.1.3 Decision Analysis 7
2.1.4 General Heuristic Decision-making Process 7

Chapter 3. Research Methodology

3.1Research Process 9
3.1.1 Secondary Data Gathering 9
3.1.2 Preliminary Data Gathering 9
3.2 Data Analysis 10
3.3 Quality of the research 10

Chapter 4. Conclusion
4.1 Conclusion 12

References 12
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Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 Background and Context:

The importance of good decision-making for organizations has many spokesmen.

Companies face more competition and pressure than ever before, as the pace of change
increases. They face constantly numerous choices from investment to recruitment
decisions. As Selke argues the balance between organizational stability and decision
flexibility can be considered to be paramount for organizational efficiency. It can make a
big difference for a business as a research paper published by McKinsey suggests: “

▪ Every success,
▪ every mishap,
▪ every opportunity seized or missed is the result of a decision that someone made
or
▪ failed to make”

A company’s effectiveness in decision-making reflects straight into its agility and

therefore organizations need a working process for this to keep up with the changing
environment.

Decision-making is not only vital for an organization to keep on track but it can be a
matter of success and failure as Rainer (1999) shows with several real-life cases in his
book. For example, when Apple decided not to license its operating system to other
manufacturers, it lost the chance to hold the monopoly that Microsoft now enjoys.
Therefore, this research takes particular interest in studying the decision-making process
in a global IT transformation programmed, which faces many challenges in its complex
operating environment. Data mining is the process of sorting through large data sets to
identify patterns and relationships that can help solve business problems through data
analysis.
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Data mining techniques and tools enable enterprises to predict future trends and make
more-informed business decisions. In other words, it is called Knowledge Discovery
from Databases. Data Mining includes many algorithms and techniques like
classification, clustering, regression, artificial intelligence, neural network, association
rule, decision tree, genetic algorithm, nearest neighbor etc, for discovering the knowledge
from the databases. Data mining technique used in different organizations (education,
banking, marketing, medicine, customer relationship management, engineering, web
mining) [1]. Applying data mining techniques in data from the educational sector is
called Educational Data Mining [2-6]. Applications of EDM are predicting student’s or
instructor’s performance, recommendation system, etc.

Machine learning consists of applying mathematical and statistical approaches to get

machines to learn from data. It consists of four big families of techniques.

1.2 Problem statement:

How to Predict the performance of organization in decision making management

algorithms?

1.3 Research Questions:

How could the decision-making process in DCC (Data Centre Consolidation) be

improved?
What frameworks and guidelines does literature provide?
How are decisions currently made in DCC?
What recommendations can be derived based on literature and case specific research?

1.4 Research Objectives:

This research is aimed to collect information from the spokesmen, who have taken a good
decision from organization. In the organization management, spokesmen suffer more to
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understand the decision as the business are not clear and effective for the spokesmen. Our
main purpose is to evaluate or identify proper decision-making for organizations. Due to
many changes and increasing complexity in the Data Centre Consolidation (DCC) case
programmed, effective decision-making is a constant challenge. Sometimes decisions
have not been implemented effectively leading to lost resources and ineffective decisions,
which have not fully contributed to reaching the programmed goals. Consequently, the
objective of this research is to provide practical recommendations to optimize and
streamline decision-making. The research problem and questions are stated in Figure 1,
and the central question for this research is: How could the decision-making process in
DCC be improved?
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Chapter 2. Literature review

2.1 Literature Review

The topic of decision-making is familiar to all, because by taking them we keep ourselves
active. “Decision making lies at the heart of our personal and professional lives”. It might
be today’s lunch or the education we choose to pursue, nonetheless choices are made
constantly. Its significance to businesses is undeniable, because a business that cannot
make decisions effectively and act upon them will lose ground. Also, organizations
executing critical decisions efficiently outperform those who implement brilliant
decisions slowly. This is why businesses can benefit tremendously from decisiveness and
action resulting from it. As a science decision-making has been explored in Economics
and Management literature already for some time, of which Decision Theory is evident
proof. It has also been studied in mathematics, sociology, psychology, economics and
political sciences, each providing a different perspective to it. Decision-making in a
business environment is a separate topic in itself, because decisions made in a business
context are meant keep the business up and running, grow and profit. As this thesis’
research focuses on operations in a business context, the literature review has focused on
management theories discovering best practice models creating a foundation for a starting
point for this research. The objective was to create a conceptual model in order to find a
way to evaluate the empirical phenomena as Jonker points out being one of the main
purposes for researching existing theory.

2.1.1 Project Management theory

The case programmers that is the focus of this thesis is running in a project structure
using project management tools adopted from theory, such as milestone planning. This 6
(58) provided the research a natural starting point for investigation. The subject revealed
different methodologies to managing projects, which most refer to the widely recognized
Project Management Body of Knowledge referred to as “PMBOK” created by the Project
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Management Institute (2013). It provides a theoretical guide to managing projects and

programmers from the initiation to the closing phase.

2.1.2 Analytical Hierarchy Process

There are several models in literature providing tools and frameworks to structure
decision-making into a defined, formal process. Satyr created the recognized Analytical
Hierarchy Process (AHP) to enable analytical decisions where a number of alternatives
are evaluated with respect to several criteria (Satyr, 2012: 85. The decision hierarchy is in
this sense a powerful tool to visualize how well the defined options fulfil the criteria.

Figure 1. Simple three level decision hierarchy adopted from Saaty

2.1.3 Decision Analysis

Another widely known decision-making model has faced similar criticism of being
laborious to use. Simplified, the decision-making model called Decision Analysis created
by Howard (1988) approaches the problem requiring a decision, a “Decision Problem”,
with three steps: Formulate, Evaluate and Appraise. The core of the process is generally
applicable and simple, but its several sub-phases take time to cover. The overall
framework is logical and provides a good structure for thinking, as Figure 3 depicts.
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Figure 2. Decision Analysis Process adopted from Howard

2.1.4 General Heuristic Decision-making Process

In search for a different perspective, Grundig et al. (2009) have examined the subject of the
overall decision-making process keeping a practical point of view in mind. They defined a
seven-step approach called “The General Heuristic Decision Making Process” presented in
Figure 3.

Figure 3. General Heuristic Decision-making Process adopted from Grünig et al.

2.2 Characteristics of information

During the literature review it became apparent that in a decision-making process one of the
most critical phases is the analysis. It defines the basis on what the decision is made on and will
define the nature of the options to be considered. In general, in analysis the nature of information
plays a big role. Therefore, this thesis also addresses some general characteristics of information
in decision-making. According to Malhotra (2005:59) the actor expects the information in a
decision [1] making situation to be:

• Accurate
• Current
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• Sufficient
• Available
• Relevant

The list presents an ideal to use as a target, but in practice all aspects can never be
covered. It can be used as an indicator to identify and acknowledge gaps in the
information available, to be taken into consideration when using it. From this list the
relevancy of the information should never be compromised, because the information has
to make “sense” to the decision problem at hand

2.3 Challenging Information and Analysis

Once analysis has been conducted and information procured it is worthy to challenge the
quality and relevancy of it. One effective way to do this is to take it into discussions with
colleagues and others involved in making the decision. Discussion and disagreement
stimulate imagination and force others to understand what is behind differing views also
states that conflicting views can help ensure that as many different aspects as possible are
covered; it challenges the facts, the analysis or even the need for the decision in the first
place. Finkelstein also asserts that a well-chosen decision group is more likely to ensure
that assumptions are fully challenged, options rigorously debated, and biases exposed,
ensuring the quality of the information.

2.4 post-decision activities

Before talking about what happens after a decision, the relevancy of the topic should be
discussed. Some might argue that what happens after the decision is out of scope when
talking about decision-making processes. After all, the process itself should basically end
when a decision has been reached. Nevertheless, if one wants to achieve actual results
and effectiveness in practice, the post-decision activities become crucial. In the
following part ways to ensure proper action is taken and agreed on are introduced. The
effectiveness of a decision can be for example evaluated by measuring whether the
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decision has made a difference in time, money, action or impact. Drucker also suggests
that a proper decision should always cover the following:

• Accountable identified
• Deadline outlined
• Affected people named (directly concerned)
• Names of indirectly effected people (“should-know”)
• What needs to be done after

who does it and how This serves as a good checklist to see that all relevant parties are
identified and necessary steps agreed on. Found from Howard’s (1988: 684) research the
Decision Quality table as presented in Figure 5, takes a similar approach but a step
further.It Figure 5:

Figure 4. Quality of a Decision, adopted from Howard, R

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Chapter 3. Research Methodology

3.1 Research Process

Semi-structured interviews were used to gather preliminary data for the purposes of this
particular research (Malhotra, 2005: 16). Before this the secondary data, initially
collected for other purposes than this research, were collected and analyses (Malhotra,
2005:). The two different sources of information provided two viewpoints: the more fact
based “hard-data” and the case specific data. In the following, the secondary and primary
data collection processes are described.

3.1.1 Secondary Data Gathering

As Malhotra (2005: 16) argues, the secondary data may form a vital foundation and a
clear focus for primary data collection, which was why it was collected and analyzed
before the interviews. As the case programmer is vast in size it handles plenty of
information. The author used past experience and discussions with the programmer
members to identify sources. The following criteria were used to determine the relevant
ones: it had to contribute or be a part of the DCC Management level decision-making
directly or indirectly. By direct meaning the source has been defined by the programmer
to contribute to decision-making and by indirect meaning it is not meant for decision-
making solely or is for another purpose. With this in mind it was relatively effortless to
distinguish the sources. The vague criteria allowed inclusion of different kinds of sources
permitting the researcher to get a comprehensive picture of the phenomena.

3.1.2 Preliminary Data Gathering

After the secondary data analysis, the preliminary data was gathered with semistructured,
direct, personal interviews allowing deep exploration of the topic (Jonker, 2010: 127).
Each interviewee was selected based on their relevancy and the role they had in decision-
making. This “purposive-sampling” means that each provided the opportunity to learn a
great deal about the issues central to the research (Greener, 2008: 49). The aim was to
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interview ten employees of the DCC project from different levels of hierarchy:
operational, middle- and top-management. This approach ensured that decision-making
was examined from different viewpoints to get a holistic view of the overall process. The
variety in the sample also reduced the risk of the researcher getting too much influenced
by the interviewees’ subjectivity, which is possible especially if such a small sample is
from a homogenous group. The interviews followed the structure of a direct, depth
interview described by Malhotra (2005) encouraging the interviewee to talk freely on
his/her thoughts on the subject. The interviews were all conducted in a similar manner.
All participants were informed beforehand on the topics and question. Each one was
asked permission to record the interview for the researcher’s use only and that all quotes
used in the thesis would be sent for approval, to reduce the risk of misinterpretation by
the researcher. All interviewees were informed to be kept anonymous in the research and
from each other to minimize external pressure.

3.2 Data Analysis

The secondary data analysis was started by grouping the sources according to their
characteristics, such as the medium it used or the type of information it was (written,
process, meeting occurrences etc.). This was done because the author noticed that similar
sources played a similar role, for example meetings were used for communication,
analysis and decisions mostly. The grouping helped to characterize the nature of the
source allowing it to be linked to Grundig’s et al (2009: 62) best practice model described
in the literature review. This way the author formed a picture of the programmer
decision-making process based on a theoretical perspective and was able to see
differences in theory and practice.

3.3 Quality of the research

For the research findings to be of value, the validity and reliability of the study have to be
taken into account. Reliability refers to the consistency or repeatability of the study and
the term validity that the research actually answers rigorously the research question. As
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these terms are originally defined for quantitative research, this thesis prefers the term
“quality” to describe the overall trustworthiness of the case study and to establish
confidence in the findings as suggests. Qualitative methods are criticized for bearing the
risk of strong subjectivity, which was recognized as early as possible by the author and
included in the preparation, realization and assessment of the research as recommended
by Jonker (2010: 107). The author has described all research phases in detail to ensure the
research is transparent to the reader. Jonker (2010: 89) also points out that qualitative
methods lack an explicit theoretical model in the beginning, which was taken into
account by forming a theoretical base and using a best practice model from literature to
carry throughout the research. This ensured preparation was done in a proper manner.
The realization and assessment have been explicitly explained in this chapter to remove
ambiguity on the research practices.

When conducting interviews in a language other than the interviewee’s mother tongue, it
is possible that some aspects will be missing, miscommunicated or misinterpreted by the
researcher (Van Nes, 2010). During the interviews the author made considerable effort in
making sure she understood the interviewees by summarizing during the discussions and
asking them to confirm the way she formulated the answer to her own understanding.
Also, all quotes used have been sent for approval to the interviewees to prevent any
misinterpretations and understandings.
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Chapter 4. Conclusion

4.1 Conclusion

The research results have been summarized in this chapter with recommendations to the case
programmer, concluded with further research possibilities. The literature review revealed many
different theories related to decision-making. There are several models from complex
mathematical ones to a few word frameworks, providing aid and guidance for decision-making.
For this research. General Heuristic Decision-making process was found suitable to help
evaluate the current DCC decision process. Its low application costs and suitability for problems
of different nature allowed it to be adapted in different situations. The empirical research’s
secondary data analysis revealed that the programmer had formalized its decision-making to
quite an extent, but the interviews showed the process was not clear to all.
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