MODULE HANDBOOK

BUSI1702 Organisational Decision Making

2024-25
Contents

Welcome message from your Module Leader...............................................................................2

Key contacts.................................................................................................................................. 2
Enquiry-Based Learning and Research-Led Teaching..................................................................3
Module details and learning outcomes..........................................................................................4
Employability................................................................................................................................. 4
Key Dates..................................................................................................................................... 4
Schedule of teaching and learning activities.................................................................................5
Assessment................................................................................................................................... 5
Resit assessments........................................................................................................................ 8
Reading recommendations........................................................................................................... 9
Ethical Compliance for Research on Taught Courses...................................................................9
Additional module information..................................................................................................... 10
Changes to the module............................................................................................................... 11
Other Details............................................................................................................................... 11

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Welcome message from your Module Leader

Welcome to BUSI1702 Organisational Decision Making!

This module aims to help students establish a fundamental understanding of the

complex nature of organisational decision-making through
identifying contextual factors. The module also aims to help students develop
an ability to apply an evidence-based approach to identifying, analysing, and
interpreting the best available information that is most relevant to specific
organisational decisions.

Students are expected to dedicate a minimum of 12.5 hours per week to the
learning activities and to successfully pass the module’s assessment. The
approximate time required for the key learning activities each week includes the
following, which is a standard expectation for 15-credit modules.

Timetabled teaching and learning (2hrs): weekly lectures (1hr), weekly tutorials
(1hr)
Guided independent study (10.5hrs): class preparation, revision, and
assessment preparation. Example activities: reading and taking notes, watching
lecture recordings, conducting independent research on the assessment
subject, writing draft paragraphs for the assessment, and developing critical
reading and writing skills.

Activity Weekly Overall hours Overall percentage of

hours of total total
Scheduled teaching 2 24 16%
Guided Independent Study 10.5 126 84%
100%

I hope you find studying this module rewarding both academically and
professionally.

Dr Minjie Cai

This handbook provides essential information about this module including the
aims and learning outcomes, the schedule of teaching and learning activities,
assessment tasks, reading recommendations and, if applicable, any additional
resources that you will need. Please read it at the start of term so you are aware
of key details and important dates.

Key contacts
The list below provides contact details of the teaching team.

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 Mr. Hai Nguyen
Email: [email protected]

Ms. Katherine Labrador Batac

Email: [email protected]

Programme Administration Team

Student Helpdesk
The Student Experience Officers are situated at the Student Helpdesk and are
here to help you throughout your journey at the University. The Helpdesk
provides support with general enquiries and signposting you to the relevant
team.

The student helpdesk can be found in the Golden Park building on the 3rd
second floor S304

We encourage you to enrol on our Student Moodle Page (linked below) where
you can access information including:
 Useful Contacts
 Timetable links
 Wellbeing guidance
 Instructions on navigating the Portal
 Introduction to our Programme Administration Team

Important: To access the Moodle Page, you will need to self-enrol yourself via
the above link.

Programme Administrators
The Programme Administrators can support you with programme specific
queries (such as missing/ incorrect grades on your profile, accessing
submission links, resit enquiries).

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 Enquiry-Based Learning and Research-Led Teaching

Enquiry-Based Learning (EBL)

Defined as ‘an approach based on self-directed enquiry or investigation in

which the student is actively engaged in the process of enquiry facilitated by a
teacher. EBL uses real life scenarios (for example, from case studies,
company visits, and project work) and students investigate topics of relevance
that foster the skills of experimental design, data collection, critical analysis
and problem-solving’.

The enquiry-based approach to learning in this module is manifested in the

adoption of 1) ‘live’ and recent business case studies that focus on on-going
organisational decisions as example in lecture materials; 2) the self-directed
nature of choosing an organisational context for the assessment; 3) the
weekly tutorials that encourage students to develop critical analysis and
problem solving skills through hands-one activities related to real-life
organisational decisions.

Research-Led Teaching (RLT)

An element of Enquiry Based Learning links to RLT, which involves faculty

introducing students to their own research where it is relevant to the
curriculum being taught as well as drawing on their own knowledge of
research developments in the field, introducing them to the work of other
researchers. RLT sees students as active participants in the research process,
not just as an audience. This is achieved by discussing such developments in
lectures and classes, and setting reading lists including recent research
publications at the frontier of the field. The definition of a diverse assessment
regime at the programme level (incorporating an expectation of familiarity with,
and use of, such publications in assignments) and the inclusion of projects at
every level of the programme is also fundamental to achieving these
objectives.

The teaching of this module is research-led based on both classic conceptual

academic articles and recent empirical publications, including the module
leader’s own research. The teaching and learning materials are in line with the
inclusive curriculum design with organisational contexts that are relatively
easy to grasp and identify with.

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Module details and learning outcomes

Host Faculty: Business

Host School: BOS
Number of Credits: 15
Term(s) of delivery: 1
Site(s) of delivery: Danang campus

Module aims:
1. To help students establish a fundamental understanding of the complex
nature of decision making in the organisational context with an
evidence-based approach to exploring behavioural, organisational, and
social factors.
2. To provide students with a practical opportunity to develop their
decision-making skills in both personal and professional context through
an enquiry-based approach to solving organisational challenges.
3. To encourage student to cultivate ethical organisational citizenship in the
workplace through examining the negative individual and organisational
consequences.

Learning Outcomes:
On successful completion of this module a student will be able to:
1. Apply an evidence-based approach to decision making in organisational
and managerial contexts
2. Identify, evaluate, and interpret the consequences of organisational and
managerial decision-making on different stakeholders using the three-
attribute salience model
3. Diagnose and address the impact of judgemental errors and biases on
organisational and managerial decision-making;

Glossary:
A pre-requisite module is one that must have been completed successfully
before taking this module.
A co-requisite module is one that must be taken alongside this module.
A learning outcome is a subject-specific statement that defines the learning to
be achieved through completing this module.

Employability

By undertaking this module students will develop these employability skills and
competences:
 Cognitive skills: opportunity to practise complex decision-making in
organisational context with exercises of gathering and assessing relevant
information to assist and justify judgements independently. Reflection on
skills gained and the impact of the decisions.
 Organisational awareness: opportunities for research into current
development of complex decisions in real organisations and
understanding how individual, organisational, sectoral, and social factors
are linked in these decisions.

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 Schedule of teaching and learning activities
Week No.
Activities
1 Introduction to organisational decision making
2 Rational decision making: Defining problems and
identifying alternatives
3 Rational decision making: Stakeholder Analysis
4 Evidence-based decision making: Stakeholder evidence
5 Evidence-based decision making: Practitioner evidence
6 Evidence-based decision making: Organisational evidence
7 Evidence-based decision making: Scientific evidence
8 Bounded rationality
9 Behavioural decision making: Judgemental heuristics, risk,
and uncertainty
10 Behavioural decision making: Managing judgemental
errors and bias
11 Revision
12 Assessment support

In addition to the teaching and learning activities within the module, additional
study support can be seen at: Academic Skills

Assessment

First sit Deadline or Weightin Maximum Marking Learning

assessments exam period g out of length type outcomes
100%* mapped to this
assessment.
Management 27 November 100% 2,500 Stepped 123
report 2024 words and
(excluding numerical
reference
list)

*The weighting refers to the proportion of the overall module result that each
assessment task accounts for.

Your assessment brief:

You are required to write a 2,500-word management report to analyse major decisions
made by organisation within the time frame of no earlier than September 2020.
Although the number of decisions is not capped for the assessment, you are strongly
encouraged to focus on one major decision to ensure that your essay presents a clear

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scope of analysis. If you decide to choose more than one major decision, you must
ensure that these decisions are clearly and logically related to each other.

Organisational context
You are encouraged to choose an organisation that you are familiar with or interested in.
The choice of organisation could be based on reputable news articles related to this
organisation and/or your own professional experience related to the organisation. If you
struggle to identify an organisational context yourself, you can use the follow case study
as a starting point and focus your report on the company WeWork.

Conceptual understanding
You are expected to demonstrate awareness, understanding, and ability to apply
conceptual and theoretical ideas covered by this module to the organisational context in a
critical manner.

The key conceptual and theoretical ideas covered by this module include rational choice
theory, institutional logic, evidence-based management, bounded rationality, intuition,
judgemental heuristics and bias, behavioural decision making, system 1 and system 2
thinking, utility theory, prospect theory, and framing effect.

Report content and structure

Introduction approx. 300 words
 Introduce the organisational context and describe specific organisational prob-
lems and decisions
 Outline key concepts covered by this module that are most relevant to the organi-
sational context

Stakeholder analysis 700 words

 Identify the key stakeholders based on the three-attribute framework, including
power, legitimacy, and urgency & analyse the relevance of the chosen organisa-
tional decisions to these stakeholders

Organisational decision evaluation 1200 words

 Identify four different types of evidence relevant to decisions, including
1) scientific evidence from peer-reviewed empirical studies published in
academic journals;
2) organisational evidence such as information from Statista information or
company annual report;
3) practitioner evidence such as CIPD, CMI report based on expert
opinions; and
4) stakeholder evidence such as stakeholder views and values shared
with reputable news outlets or stakeholder survey such as employee
survey including trade union member survey

 Based on the identified evidence, analyse contextual factors at the managerial,

organisational, sectoral, and institutional level that might influence or had influ-
enced the decisions

 Discuss any judgmental heuristics and bias that might influence or had influenced
the decision making

Recommendations 300 words

 Suggest actions for the decision makers based on the previous section
 Discuss what might encourage and prevent the decision makers to take the sug-
gested actions, such as resource availability and cost

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  Consider the impact of these actions on the most relevant stakeholders

References
 Include only the references that you have read and cited in the report
 Use Harvard referencing

Word count: 2,500 words

A submission with word count – or + 10% of 2,500 is acceptable; submissions without
meeting the minimum or the maximum word count would be penalised)

Example organisation & organisational decisions:

WeWork is an American commercial real estate company that offers workspace rental
services to individuals and organisations. The company reported a loss of $2.1b in the
first quarter of 2021 due to losing 200,000 customers amid the COVID-19 pandemic and
the restructuring costs that include scaling back from unprofitable locations and paying a
settlement the co-founder Adam Neumann (Hammond, 2021). The company has made
strategic decisions to reduce its global expansion and costs since Sandeep Mathrani
replaced Adam Neumann as the new Chief Executive Officer. You are expected to step
into the role of the General Manager for WeWork UK, Ireland, and Emerging Markets to
produce a report for the executive team and the investors. The executives and investors
are concerned with the financial losses, the history of problematic decisions, and the
negative coverage of the company in the media.

You are tasked with evaluating the strategic decisions your company recently made,
which include the decision to restructure the organisation that involved making staff
redundant (Nast, 2020), and the decision to attract and retain customers through
expanding the membership benefits, focusing on city centres, and developing a new
‘Growth Campus’ initiative that targets UK university students and Small Medium
Enterprise employees (Thomas, 2021).

Your report should review four types of evidence relevant to these decisions, including
scientific, organisational, stakeholder, and expert evidence, and analyse the impact of
these decisions on different stakeholders using the stakeholder salience model. You are
expected to recommend future actions based on your review of evidence and stakeholder
analysis, taking into account of the specific operational environment of the UK and/or
Ireland.

References
Hammond, G. (2021) WeWork loses $2.1bn and sheds members as lockdowns bite,
Financial Times, 20 May. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/60ea2f72-586f-4f3e-
b153-3455b93539b8 (Accessed: 9 June 2021).

Nast, C. (2021) WeWork triggers second wave of mass layoffs in the UK, Wired UK,
Available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wework-redundancies-uk-restructure
(Accessed: 30 July 2021).

Thomas, D. (2021) WeWork offers UK tenants greater flexibility to tempt them back,
Financial Times, 15 February. Available at: https://www.ft.com/content/d540a330-d64c-
4ae7-bd03-6e6ec0ad651b (Accessed: 12 March 2021).

Undergraduate rubric template (numerical scale). If you cannot access the file,
please check the assessment marking criteria file on Moodle.

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 Important note: Coursework is marked on the understanding that it is the student’s
own work on the module and that it has not, in whole or part, been presented
elsewhere for assessment. Where material has been used from other sources,
this must be properly acknowledged in accordance with the University’s
Regulations regarding Academic Misconduct.

Marking, feedback and next steps

To pass this module, you must achieve an overall mark of 40+ for all
assessments.

For coursework, the marks and feedback will normally be provided to students
within fifteen working days of the submission deadline. In exceptional
circumstances, where there is a delay in providing feedback, you will be informed
by the module leader.

If you do not pass a module at the first attempt, you may be eligible for a resit
opportunity on the failed assessments. The Exam Board will decide whether you
will have an opportunity to resit. They will consider your overall set of results and
profile, including other modules, and your engagement on the programme, for
example, whether you have attempted assessments or not. Note that marks on
resit assessments are capped at 40% unless extenuation has been applied for
and granted.

For further details on resit assessments, please see section 7 below.

The assessment and feedback policy can be accessed at Assessment and

Feedback Policy

Extenuating circumstances and student support

The University recognises there are times when serious and unexpected matters
which are beyond a student’s control (such as serious illness or injury, death in
family) impact on their academic performance and ability to complete
assessments by the deadline. Guidance on claiming extenuation can be found at:
Extenuating circumstances

External Examiner

The External Examiner for this module is:

Name:
Institution:

Please note that the role of the External Examiner is to evaluate the overall
standard of assessments on the module. They are unable to correspond with
individual students about their work. If you need to discuss your marks or
feedback, please contact the module leader.

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 Resit assessments
Assessment Schedule
Resit Deadline Weighting Maximum Marking Learning
assessments out of length type outcomes
100%* mapped to this
assessment.
Management report N/A 100% 2,500 stepped 1,2,3
words

Q&A sessions to support resit will be held in due course.

Reading recommendations
The following are suggested readings for the module. Additional, more detailed
reading recommendations will be provided for the module topics.

This module does not use a textbook, but students are encouraged to access
the following title to develop a basic understanding of the evidence-based
decision-making approach that is critical for the assessment.

This title is accessible via the university eBook portal:

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/gre/detail.action?docID=5502778

Author Title Publisher ISBN

Eric Evidence-Based Management: Kogan 9780749483753

Barends How to Use Evidence to Make Page
and Denise Better Organizational Decisions
M.
Rousseau

Required reading:
In line with the learning aim 1, students must read these articles repetitively to
establish a basic understanding of the complex nature of decision making in the
organisational context.

Artinger, F., Petersen, M., Gigerenzer, G. and Weibler, J. (2015) Heuristics as adaptive
decision strategies in management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36(S1), pp.
S33–S52.

Briner, R.B. and Walshe, N.D. (2014) ‘From passively received wisdom to actively
constructed knowledge: Teaching systematic review skills as a foundation of evidence-
based management’, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 13(3), pp. 415–
432.

Brodbeck, F. C., Kerschreiter, R., Mojzisch, A. and Schulz-HARDT, S. (2007) Group

Decision Making Under Conditions of Distributed Knowledge: The Information Asym-
metries Model., Academy of Management Review, 32(2), pp. 459–479.

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 Rousseau, D.M. (2020) ‘Making Evidence-Based Organizational Decisions in an Uncertain
World’, Organizational Dynamics, 49(1) p. 100756.

Simon, H. A. (1987) Making Management Decisions: the Role of Intuition and Emotion,
Academy of Management Perspectives, Academy of Management, 1(1), pp. 57–64.

Smith, G. F. (1989) Defining Managerial Problems: A Framework for Prescriptive The-

orizing, Management Science, 35(8), pp. 963–981.

Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. (1974) Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and

Biases, Science, 185(4157), pp. 1124–1131.

Tversky, A. and Kahneman, D. (1981) The framing of decisions and the psychology of
choice, Science, 211(4481), pp. 453–458.

Supplementary reading:
In line with the learning aim 2, students should read the following articles to develop
their decision-making knowledge and skills in both personal and professional context.

Bowman, H. (2005) ‘It’s a year and then that’s me’: masters students’ decision‐making,
Journal of Further and Higher Education, 29(3), pp. 233–249.

Bazerman, M. H. and Sezer, O. (2016) Bounded awareness: Implications for ethical

decision making, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Celebrat-
ing Fifty Years of Organizational Behavior and Decision Making Research (1966-
2016), 136, pp. 95–105.

Cabantous, L., Gond, J.-P. and Johnson-Cramer, M. (2010) Decision Theory as Prac-
tice: Crafting Rationality in Organizations, Organization Studies, 31(11), pp. 1531–
1566.

Calabretta, G., Gemser, G. and Wijnberg, N. M. (2017) The Interplay between Intuition
and Rationality in Strategic Decision Making: A Paradox Perspective, Organization
Studies, 38(3–4), pp. 365–401.

Kahneman, D. and Klein, G. (2009) Conditions for intuitive expertise: a failure to

disagree, The American Psychologist, 64(6), pp. 515–526.

Keeney, R. L. (1982) Feature Article—Decision Analysis: An Overview, Operations

Research, 30(5), pp. 803–838.

Pendleton, A., Lupton, B., Rowe, A. and Whittle, R. (2019) Back to the Shop Floor: Be-
havioural Insights from Workplace Sociology, Work, Employment and Society, 33(6),
pp. 1039-1057.

Rousseau, D.M. and Barends, E.G.R. (2011) ‘Becoming an evidence-based HR

practitioner’, Human Resource Management Journal, 21(3), pp. 221–235.

Slaughter, J. E., Bagger, J. and Li, A. (2006) Context effects on group-based employee
selection decisions, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 100(1),
pp. 47–59.

Advanced reading:
In line with the learning aim 3, students should read the following articles to cultivate
an awareness of the ethical issues related to the individual and organisational conse-

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 quences produced by different decision-making approaches.

Almeida, S., Fernando, M., Hannif, Z. and Dharmage, S. C. (2015) Fitting the mould:
the role of employer perceptions in immigrant recruitment decision-making, The Inter-
national Journal of Human Resource Management, 26(22), pp. 2811–2832.

Dane, E. and Pratt, M. G. (2007) Exploring Intuition and its Role in Managerial Deci-
sion Making, Academy of Management Review, 32(1), pp. 33–54.

Leicht-Deobald, U., Busch, T., Schank, C., Weibel, A., Schafheitle, S., Wildhaber, I.
and Kasper, G. (2019) The Challenges of Algorithm-Based HR Decision-Making for
Personal Integrity, Journal of Business Ethics, 160(2), pp. 377–392.

Morrell, K. and Learmonth, M. (2015) ‘Against evidence-based management, for

management learning’, Academy of Management Learning & Education, 14(4) pp.
520–533.

Rousseau, D.M. (2020) ‘The Realist Rationality of Evidence-Based Management’,

Academy of Management Learning & Education, 19(3) Academy of Management, pp.
415–424.

Simon, H. A. (1991). 'Bounded Rationality and Organizational Learning', Organization

Science, 2(1), 125–134.

Smith, G. F. (2003) Beyond Critical Thinking and Decision Making: Teaching Business
Students How to Think, Journal of Management Education, 27(1), pp. 24–51.

Thaler, R. H. (1999) Mental accounting matters, Journal of Behavioral Decision

Making, 12(3), pp. 183–206.

Ethical Compliance for Research on Taught Courses

University policy requires ANY research which might involve human participants to use set
procedures for informing participants, obtaining their informed consent to provide data, collect-
ing and storing data. This includes the collection of data for formative or extra-curricula activi-
ties.

Normally this requirement will impact upon approval of topics for undergraduate and postgrad-
uate dissertations BUT may also impact upon individual assignments where a student or
group of students will undertake primary research.

Where a course includes an assessment item involving student collection of data, whether
from human participants or not, before any data is collected each student on such a course
must:
 Undertake and pass the Epigium Research Ethics online course, if they have
not already done so;
 Register the details of the project on the online Ethics Approval Form on
the FBUS Research Ethics Moodle site;
All data collected in the course of the project must be:
 stored on the student’s University Home (G:) or OneDrive only1;
 destroyed following the confirmation of results at the PAB or resit PAB.
In addition, any student collecting data from human participants must:
 Not collect data that is sensitive in nature or is collected from University of
Greenwich staff, nor from vulnerable populations such as children;

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  Provide all participants with an offline or online participant information sheet
and consent form, using the authorised template;
 Include the participant information sheet consent form template as appen-
dices to the submitted assignment;
 Include any questionnaire or interview guide as appendices to the submitted
assignment;
 If collecting data online, utilise the University’s subscriptions to JISC Online
Surveys, Office 365 Forms, SNAP, Qualtrics, Teams, Skype for Business
or AdobeConnect;
 Not collect data using public domain tools such as SurveyMonkey, Google-
Docs, Google Hangouts (which are outside EU regulation).

If any variation from the set procedures is sought:

i. an individual application must be made to the Business Faculty Research
Ethics Committee using a University Research Ethics Application Form available
from: https://docs.gre.ac.uk/rep/vco/urec-application-form.
ii. The response of the committee will be emailed to the student’s University
email address. The email confirming ethics approval has been granted must be
kept and included as an appendix to the assignment submission it has been
granted for.
iii. Where an application is not approved, the Committee will provide contact de-
tails for the person the student should approach to negotiate the next steps.

Failing to comply with the conditions of this policy is an academic offence.

FREC process Nov 2019 Rev.docx

Additional module information

Activities
A film screening of productions related to organisational decision making is
tentatively planned.

Resources
Additional multimedia resources are available on Moodle.

Changes to the module

At the University of Greenwich, we value feedback from students as well as

External Examiners and other stakeholders and we use this information to help us
improve our provision. Some students suggested that they would like to have
more options in assessment case study. Therefore, the assessment this year
allows students to choose an organisation themselves.

Important note: The University of Greenwich will do all that it reasonably can to
deliver the module and support your learning as specified in our handbooks and
other information provided. However, under some circumstances, changes may
have to be made. This may include modifications to the:

 content and syllabus of modules, including in relation to placements

 timetable, location and number of classes
 content or method of delivery of your module

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  timing and method of assessments.

This might be because of, for example:

 academic changes within subject areas

 the unanticipated departure or absence of members of university staff
 where the numbers expected on a module are so low that it is not possible
to deliver an appropriate quality of education for students enrolled on it.
 industrial action by university staff or third parties
 the acts of any government or local authority
 acts of terrorism.

In these circumstances, the University will take all reasonable steps to minimise
disruption by making reasonable modifications. However, to the full extent that it is
possible under the general law, the University excludes liability for any loss and/or
damage suffered by any applicant or student due to these circumstances.

Other Details
The majority of information relevant to you while you study at the University has been brought
together into your programme handbook. Please refer to your programme handbook for any
further information you might require including:

 Deadlines and extenuating circumstances,

 Plagiarism and referencing,

 Who to go to for advice or if you are concerned,

 How to provide us with feedback,

 Key administrative procedures.

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