Jaanbaz Ahmad Assignment 1

12482079 Judgment & Decision Making

UTS: ENGINEERING
Cover Sheet

DISTANCE MODE
SUBJECT NAME: Judgment and Decision Making

SUBJECT NUMBER: 49001

(Please tick the appropriate item)

Assessment Item 1: Abstract Assignment

Assessment Item 2: RME Exercises

All students must submit an electronic copy of their assignments to Turnitin. (See subject Instructions, Item 8 -
remove the cover sheet to make your submission to TURNITIN). AND a hard copy (include the cover sheet with
your hard copy).

Date: April 16, 2016.

I have submitted the report

to Turnitin (tick box) …….
Student Details
(Please use identical information to your enrolment details)

Family Name/Surname: Ahmad

First Name: Jaanbaz

Student ID Number: 12482079

Assignment due by: April 21, 2016.

Lecturer’s name: Tom Anderson

_____________________________________________________________
Faculty use only (date and initial)

Faculty received: Marker received:

Jaanbaz Ahmad Assignment 1
12482079 Judgment & Decision Making

Reading 1.3
Jackall, 1988.
Looking Up and Looking Around.

Abstract:

Making of decisions is an essential part of the managerial enterprise. And as much fancy as being
a manager sounds like, truth be told, there is attached some pain with the pleasure. And
speaking of pain, decision making and taking responsibility on self would be the biggest of pains
in this game. Most of the time, being manager is about making choices that you don’t personally
think are right, but still have to consider making them in the larger interest of the company, or
the bosses you work for. For this very reason, people are reluctant in making decisions
independently, or even expressing their thoughts. People prefer to take a decision in groups so
that their individual voice doesn’t come to blame if things go not as planned.

As people go up the hierarchical tree, the more afraid and suspended they feel when confronting
a choice making situation. This happens for a number of reasons; fear of failure, not taking sole
responsibility, afraid they may be scapegoated just to name a few.

In big companies, managers have an unwritten and an unspoken rule of thumb, avoid making
any decisions. And if, God Forbid, there comes a situation where you have to make a choice,
involve as many people as you can to make it. Simple.

In short, people start peeking here and there when making a decision, instead of speaking their
minds, so as to avert any responsibility, and hope for others to take charge not always because
others are more experienced than themselves, but because they let the fear of failing take
charge. People try to keep themselves covered from the debris, in case of a catastrophe.

Example:

I have had an experience of this kind in many stages of my life. I remember, when I was doing
my baccalaureate and whenever me and my fellow class mates had a problem with any subject
and wanted to discuss the issue with our professor, we all would be reluctant in going and
talking to him alone. We would go in as a group or not go in at all. That’s because none of us
wanted to take the risk of becoming prominent in the professor’s eyes. There was always a risk
that the professor could take the issue as a personal attack on his/her teaching skills and fail the
student if anyone of us went in there alone, or if we went in there at all.

And then when I was working as a junior architect after I had done my bachelor’ degree, me and
my colleagues would often fall victim to the TAKE THE FALL GUY act. The boss would
implement on the juniors his mistakes and stand with a clean slate in front of the clients.
Jaanbaz Ahmad Assignment 1
12482079 Judgment & Decision Making

Reading 3.3
Fischoff Et Al, 1980
Knowing what you want, measuring labile values.

Abstract:

Measuring labile values are unprejudiced individual judgements in different occasions. Every
now and again, people don't have clear perspective of what they need. And extraordinary help
originates from the examiner, distinguishing the mistakes.

An individual has a tendency to have an unmistakable thought on what they need in a specific
occasion and such thoughts received by individuals are a propensity, while done by a gathering
is custom. Our reaction changes when we are confused and have conflicting qualities. When we
make a judgment we ought to be clear and sure about the viewpoint of it, for the same
situational examination ought to be made, and make inquiries to ourselves which are not posed
by the elicitor, such like:

• Is defining issue an issue? • Altering the striking nature and

• What are the important results and
choices?
• Should the results be named?
• Should the qualities be measured?
• Should the issue be disintegrated?
• Controlling of peoples viewpoint.
significance of points of view.
• Choosing the request time.
• Changing trust in communicated values as
in misattributing the sources.
• Changing the respondent by devastating
his current points of view and setting up of
new ones.

The investigation of these inquiries relies upon how the individual/ respondent involves it.
The obligation of a person in examining their own judgment, regardless of disjointedness and
scepticism, is a direct result of the reality of more than one inquiry being asked by the world.
Notwithstanding the different inconsistencies, the individual persuades himself with his own
choices.

It's here where the elicitor needs to ensnare its perspectives deliberately to the greatest
advantage of the respondent and utilize the formal basic leadership techniques if conceivable.

Henceforth it can be taken that an individual' choice might be turned around from time to time.
The adjustments in the elicitation mode markedly affect individuals' inclinations. This can be
changed satisfyingly by giving another explanatory instrument to the respondent to esteem
judgment to their greatest advantage.

Example:

Relating to this topic, I have a very recent experience that I have chosen to disclose. About 7
months ago, I had applied in a very reputable Middle Eastern construction company. They called
me in for an interview and after a crucial screening process, I was selected, out of almost a
thousand candidates who had applied for the vacancy, to work for them as an Assistant Project
Manager. This was about the same time I had applied in the respectable UTS for admission, and
it was in the same days I had secured admission in this honourable institute.
Jaanbaz Ahmad Assignment 1
12482079 Judgment & Decision Making

Now this was a very stressful time for me as I had to make a big choice. Though both the
opportunities presented to me were very good, but there was a better of the two choices which I
had to make. During this choice making my mind was totally suspended and I wasn’t able to
determine the path I should choose for myself. All my friends, uncles and cousins were
suggesting me to grab the job saying things like, “this is a once in a lifetime opportunity and it
won’t come around again”. My mother then explained to me one thing, which for me is a lesson
for life, the moral of it is that “people will keep on talking in the things where their speaking isn’t
called for. Just do whatever you think is right!” and hence with my mother’s extraordinary
support, I chose to come to UTS and I thank God for making me choose the right and a better
decision.

Reading 4.2
Reason, 1990.
Causes of accidents in mechanical systems: possible causes of mishaps in a production
line and the limitation of human and machine interaction.

Abstract:

Lately, mechanical developments have driven man to make various machineries utilizing
complex procurement strategies and methods. These strategies make utilization of human
mind, aptitudes and backing of complex apparatus and machines. Any work production line
comprises of only a limited number of administrators, labourers, machines and constrained
assets cooperating to run the generation line effectively and securely.

Nothing on the planet is sans hazard however the danger of things going out of hands can be
minimized using safe strategies and protections. In spite of all the wellbeing measures and
safeguards, there is a space for blunder, particularly when there is human intervention.
Apart from this, the machines and humans can only work to a specific productivity, which
when comes in a strife can prompt an episode, or a series of, breakdown events. Aside from
production requirements, there is a set of safety measures and regulations working in
parallel to guarantee safe operations. Notwithstanding all of the wellbeing measures,
circumstances may emerge which prompt genuine emergencies. These may include wrong
basic leadership, human lack of awareness, human negligence or slack towards specific
Jaanbaz Ahmad Assignment 1
12482079 Judgment & Decision Making

demonstrations, negative life experiences throughout somebody's life such as family issues,
budgetary misfortune just to name a few, or mechanical anomalies.

Such crucial outcomes never come as a result of a solitary occasion or activity. They
generally take place as a result of a series of occasions happening together or in such an
arrangement which intensifies the impact of each other and sets in motion a catastrophe.
However individuals can't be to blame. Humans don't deliberately head towards mishaps:
they don't have the foresight to anticipate the outcome of their carelessness and negligence.

Improving and upgrading of a process cycle is only possible on the basis of information and data
gathered from reported close miss incidents and accidents by anyone part of the system chain.

Example:

I take a simple incident which I experienced a few years back. I was once using a Xerox machine
to generate copies of some documents. The machine was doing a great job in the beginning. I
was copying one page at a time but it would have taken too long like that and I was running
short on time. Ten minutes into the process of copying documents without any rush, everything
was good. I started rushing things and overburdened the machine with multiple copies at a time,
its RAM got full and eventually the paper started getting stuck inside of the machine which
resulted in a lot of time getting wasted.

The machines are not as dull as they once used to be. Time is moving forward and fast, machines
are becoming much more intelligent and humans are losing their potential and capabilities to
machines. There was, and hopefully always will be, room for improvement but this room is
squeezing and becoming small.

Reading 8.2
Callon, 1987.
Society in the making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis.

Abstract:

In this article, Michel Callon endeavours to build up a certainty that the study and technological
innovations and human sciences go as an inseparable unit.

Callon is negating the thought of numerous sociologists that, at whatever time in a development
process, it is conceivable to recognize every movement particularly into specialized or
sociological exercises. To demonstrate this, Callon utilizes the contextual analysis of an
unmistakable advancement, i.e. the development of electric car (VEL) in France.

From the study, it was found that the different components that went into the making of VEL
could never be put in an entirely characterized progressive system or be recognized by nature.
Engineers, who created and concentrated on these activities, not just did it from a specialized
perspective, but additionally took a gander at the social improvements that these developments
would bring. Callon calls such specialists as engineer-sociologists.
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12482079 Judgment & Decision Making

Amid this advancement time of VEL, there were two ideologically inverse sociologists about
whom Callon needs to say, Touraine, who claimed that social improvement occurred where
there are class clashes, and Bordieu, who saw improvement of society as the encounters
between different fields like science, governmental issues, utilization, and so on. To express the
courses in which the investigation of advancements could change into an apparatus of
sociological examination, Callon presents the term Actor Network.

Actor Network system is an eccentrically shifting system of components, both technical and
social, in which the actor plays the part of both heterogeneous sociology of engineers with
homogeneous sociology of sociologists utilizing fundamental instruments of disentanglement
and juxtaposition.

Callon anticipates that the sociologists will reclassify the way of sociological investigation,
instead of getting motivated by the engineer-sociologists and use them as a device to
comprehend different sociological systems.

In spite of the fact that performing artist network will continue creating over the long haul,
regardless it can be utilized to follow to the underlying phase of innovation and took after to the
concepts steady prologue to the business sector.

Example:

My final year project in my bachelors was titled “Automation & Robotics in the Construction
Industry”. With this project, my aim was to not only shed light on the present conditions and
social, plus technical, setbacks in the fields of construction in the underdeveloped nations, but
also to compare them with those of the developed nations and also how these conditions can be
changed for the better by following the footsteps of the developed nations and adopting their
successful methods. The value of life in the under developed nations is lower than buying water.
The intervention of machines in this industry would be both a game and a life changer.
Comparing how construction work is carried out in the western nations with that to how is done
in the eastern and specifically the underdeveloped places, makes one stunned. The techniques
used are state of the art, there is a lot of machine intervention and safety measures taken on
sites are very satisfying. The east has a big deal to learn from the west.