Rational Decision Making In The Pharmaceutical Industry

Decision making may be regarded as the voluntary choice between the viable available options using judgement so as to reach agreement on a course of action. This is central to the organization; it underpins and directs organizational activity leading inevitably to its successes or failures. Of key importance to decision making is the relevance of or lack there of, of rationality. The question however to be asked in order to answer this question is what is meant by “rational” and how can one substantiate that decisions made does follow the rational ideal or not. One must also ask why would organizations choose or be forced to take decision choices other than what is evidently rational or logical. In the exploration of why decision makers may strive to make rational decision and not do so in practice, this paper will explore whether in fact rationality is the effort of the decisions makers or how much the ends and decisions taken reflect a neutral undetached system as well as the many organizational structures and shared values, personal styles or cognitive systems therein.

Firstly, rationality in decision making is at the heart of the modern organization according to Weber. Rationality may be formal as concerned more with the appearance and less with reality as it is based on calculations and the language of presentation of information in decision making and organizational processes. Decision making processes may be presented with information which leads to ‘formally’ rational decisions based on the language of the information presented for the decision makers presented and the language in which it was presented for example accountancy jargon or statistics or the CIA representatives ‘dressed up’ presentation of the Cuban Invasion plan (Chap. 1 Reader). Decisions are also rationally lead by ‘substantive’ means as it is concerned with one aspect of the information presented or among the options available. This may be for a number or reasons, whether political,...