Decision Making Assignment: Analyzing Procedures & Functioning of Qantas Airlines

Question

Task: Decision Making Assignment Instructions: Students are to examine an organization with which they are familiar and to critically analyze a key decision or series of decisions made by the organization. The specific task will be determined by the facilitator and unit coordinator in consultation with each group. Using appropriate critical thinking and decision-making models the group is to analyses the decisions made by the organizations and whether it was sound and justified. This will take the form of a nominated case that is distributed to each group

Students need to consider the data available to the organization the demonstrated decision tools and techniques used, including Kepner-Tregoe Methodology and the six-step good decision-making process by Lau's six-step decision tool, and ethical decision-making frameworks. There is a minimum of 6 peer-reviewed journal articles in APA style

Answer

Introduction to Decision Making Assignment
Decision-making has been considered an important role in the planning procedure. It focuses on making choices by identifying a decision and gathering information accessing alternative solutions for eradicating any issues within the workplace environment (Brownson et al. 2017). The report would focus on the decision-making procedures of Qantas airlines in Australia and the issues faced by the organization in their functioning. The study would also focus on the key decision made by the organization considering the data available to the organization about the demonstrated decision-making tools including the Kepner-Tregoe methodology and six-step decision tool with the ethical decision-making framework.

Main body
About the organization
Qantas airlines have safely achieved its goal by being the world's safest airline for the year 2020. It has been stated that the organization is the Flag carrier of Australia and is regarded as the largest airline by fleet size, international flights, and international destination (Qantas. 2021). Observed as in the year 2019 contest airlines completed the longest commercial flight between New York City and Sydney using Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner in 19 hours and 20 minutes.

Graph 1: Annual Report of Qantas Airlines 2020
(Source: Annual report. Qantas. 2021)

The graph of Qantas airlines gives a clear study of the revenue achieved in the year 2020 which has been $4672 million as compared to the year 2019 which was $6096 million. The annual turnover of the company has been recorded to be $17,966 million with a net profit of $899 million. Although there have been several losses that have been recorded in late February 2021 where Qantas airlines had a half-yearly revenue loss of $1.08 billion (Annual report. Qantas. 2021). the number of passengers fell by 83%. Therefore the decision-making has been the only procedure by which the company could revive its losses and get to the market with a strong comeback.

Discussion of the issues underlying the airline industry of Qantas
All the Qantas airline of Australia has been declared as the safest airline organization certain immediate problems have been emerging in the foundation with the arrival of its rival company Virgin Australia. It has also been going to several price wars; several other airline industries have offered comparatively lower prices to the customers than Qantas airline (Hayes. 2021). The implementation of the soft and hard skills by the corporate leaders has led to the rise in conflicts within the organization as the increase in the number of decision-makers has been creating a conflict which has been a serious issue for Qantas airline.

Decision making and types of decision making
According to Marttunen, Lienert& Belton (2017), the decision-making criterion focuses on the careful and systematic evaluation of the issue or challenge faced by the organization and analysis of several alternative rational and logical facts to figure out the way to eradicate it from the root. It could be stated that decisions based on inclusions and the experience of the decision-maker may sometimes be irrelevant and baseless.

Strategic decision making
Shahid, Rappon& Bertha (2019), stated that strategic decision-making has been regarded as the long-term complex decision-making procedure made by the managers of the organization aiming to be the market leader. On the other hand, Næss,&Håland(2021) the decisions are made by the most experienced people with prompt action leading to greater uniformity within the organization. The implementation of strategic decision-making would be helpful for Qantas airlines to take the correct decision for upgrading their business in the domestic as well as international market.

Tactical decision making
Tactical decision-making has been regarded as a medium-term decision making that focuses on fewer complexities and made by mediocre managers who focus on launching new products and opening new branches. The implementation of the tactical decision-making within the airline industry of Qantas would help it to decide conventionally about the new launch of any services that would excite the consumers rapidly.

Operational decision making
The decision-making of operational decisions focuses on the day-to-day and the simple and routine monitoring of the whole work accessed within the organization. The operational decision-making is done by junior managers like regulating the orders and creating the staff rotation. Qantas airline would get implemented through the operational decision making acid daily work would get scrutinized and monitored accordingly.

Decision-making Tools
According to Joseph &Gaba. (2020), the decision-making tool has been a positive way by which the organization gets help to find out all the possible alternatives of decision and the chances of success and failure. It could be stated that the Kepner-Tregoe methodology would help demonstrate the techniques used by Qantas airlines in Australia for decision making. The SWOT analysis also would be helpful to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the industry.

Kepner-Tregoe Matrix
The Kepner-Tregoe matrix tool has been considered as a Matrix tool to support the organization’s decision-making and focuses on the risk assessment and prioritization that would be necessary for the acquiring of objectives with the course of actions that would focus on the minimization of negative consequences (Meister, Metternich &Cviko. 2020). Qantas airlines focus on using the matrix tool to support organizational decision-making. Qantas airlines focus on the four basic steps by using the decision Matrix for eradicating the issues according to the situations.

Figure 2: Kepner-Tregoe Troubleshooting Methodology
(Source: Meister, Metternich &Cviko. 2020)

The four steps include
Situation appraisal focuses on the clarification of the situation that has been the main reason for the challenges that the organization faces.

Problem analysis of the problem of the issues and its root cause gets determined and acted accordingly.

Decision analysis through which the decision-making procedures for the issues and the alternatives of it gets identified with the report of risk analysis that could be faced by the organization gets jotted down

Potential problem analysis by which the jotted solution gets further pointed out against the problems and the negative consequences and measure of the actions are proposed to minimize the analysis this potential problem analysis ?

Lau’s six-step decision tool

Figure 3: Six step decision model
(Source: Becker. 2021)

The six-step decision model focuses on the emphasis of correct decision-making by analyzing the situations and alternative searches that focus on bringing out the alternative way to eradicate the issues (Palomäki, 2020). Airlines could implement the six-step decision to recognize the need for making decisions to eradicate issues by generating alternatives, accessing the alternatives, and choosing among the alternatives which implement the best for eradicating the issues and learning from the feedback accordingly (Becker. 2021).

SWOT Analysis
The SWOT Analysis would be a successful way to get acquainted with the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities of Qantas airlines in Australia (Quezada et al. 2019).

Conclusion
The study gave a clear analysis of the decision-making procedures made by Qantas airlines in Australia and the different methods and decision-making tools that were implemented to eradicate the issues that the organization has been facing for execution. A brief description of the organization’s business issues and hindrances that have not been letting the organization work smoothly get evaluated and at the same time the decision-making tools help in eradicating the issues which have led to hassles in working.

Reference
Annual report.Qantas (2021). Retrieved 5 May 2021, from https://investor.qantas.com/FormBuilder/_Resource/_module/doLLG5ufYkCyEPjF1tpgyw/file/annual-reports/2020-Annual-Report-ASX.pdf

Becker, T. (2021).Six-Step Decision-Making Process. Retrieved 5 May 2021, from http://www.clear-decisions.com/2011/12/six-step-decision-making-process.html Brownson, R. C., Allen, P., Jacob, R. R., deRuyter, A., Lakshman, M., Reis, R. S., & Yan, Y. (2017). Peer-Reviewed: Controlling Chronic Diseases Through Evidence-Based Decision Making: A Group-Randomized Trial. Preventing chronic disease, 14.

Fly with Australia’s most popular airline | Qantas. (2021). Retrieved 5 May 2021, from https://www.qantas.com/us/en.html Hayes, M. K. (2021). Emerald Airport Runway-March 2021 Issue EPW Article.

Joseph, J., &Gaba, V. (2020). Organizational structure, information processing, and decision-making: a retrospective and road map for research. Academy of Management Annals, 14(1), 267-302.

Marttunen, M., Lienert, J., & Belton, V. (2017).Structuring problems for Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis in practice: A literature review of method combinations.European Journal of Operational Research, 263(1), 1-17.

Meister, M., Metternich, J., &Cviko, A. (2020). Definition of problem types for planning digitally supported problem-solving processes during product launch. Procedia CIRP, 93, 983-988.

Næss, S. C. K., &Håland, E. (2021). Between diagnostic precision and rapid decision?making: Using institutional ethnography to explore diagnostic work in the context of Cancer Patient Pathways in Norway. Sociology of Health & Illness.

Palomäki, S. (2020). Identifying and validating key challenges of Big Data-based decision-making: a framework mapping out challenges from data to decisions. Quezada, L. E., Reinao, E. A., Palominos, P. I., &Oddershede, A. M. (2019).Measuring Performance Using SWOT Analysis and Balanced Scorecard.Procedia Manufacturing, 39, 786-793. Shahid, N., Rappon, T., & Berta, W. (2019). Applications of artificial neural networks in health care organizational decision-making: A scoping review. PloS one, 14(2), e0212356.