My Boss - Personal Essay

My boss was off island for a period of 2 weeks. During my bosses brief absent I was empowered to make slight business decisions pending my boss's approval through means of communication of email or telephone.

A situation arose where we needed 20 barrels of oil for the daily operation of one of our wastewater plant but was unable to purchase any from our vendor because we had an over due invoice. The vendor refused to supply us with any oil unless our due balance was paid in full. I tried contacting my boss but was unable to reach her by phone and a reply by email was not received until after my decision was made. I decided to pay off the balance ($15,000) and take 5 barrels of oil with the intention of purchasing the remaining 10 when my boss came back.

When my boss finally got in contact with me I explained the situation. He was very displeased with the decision I made because of the company lack of funds at the time particularly that week being a payroll week. He had preferred that I paid for just 5 barrels in cash as oppose to paying of the balance subsequently leaving more funds for payroll.

Satisficing was used in making my decision because at the time I view that the decision made would meet the needs on demand. The way that the alternatives was presented lead me to incorporate the prospect theory in this decision making process as well. Pseudocertainty theory suggests that if given an action that appears to eliminate risk, rather than simply reducing it, we are likely to opt for that action in similarity I thought that paying off the vendor would reduce the chances of establishing bad credit and still acquire the oil.

The field of judgment and decision is about the focus of research on how people combine needs and beliefs to choose a course of action. The theoretical (perhaps "defining") template for a decision includes 3 components: (a) courses of action (choice options, alternatives); (b) beliefs about objective states, processes, and events in the world (including outcome states and means to achieve them); and (c) desires, values, or utilities that describe the consequences associated with the outcomes of each action-event combination.

We can then pick the alternative with the highest expected value and make a decision based on calculation, not on subjective emotional reactions. Using slightly different terminology, Russo and Shoemaker (1989,