Today’s business world is characterized by a complex non-linear environment, non-hierarchical organization structures, multi-country and de-centralized operations, etc. The prominent models of decision-making that were primarily developed with the industrial economy in mind, and that viewed decision-making as a couple of linear sequential steps and “decisions given-and-decisions followed” — might not work too well. Knowledge-based economies call for developing decision-making models that represent the complexity of the present world business. Under such context, we present an alternative approach to studying management decision-making — seeking inspiration from the natural/biological systems. Bees show similar behavior in their foraging activities, as a single objective management decision-making problem. The uniqueness of the developed model lies in its ability to explain the major properties of a complex system, and the value that emergence (of a decision) brings to a company.
Author Profile
Dr. Satyakama Paul
Institution: University of Johannesburg
Department: Department of Mechanical Engineering Science
City: Johannesburg
State: Gauteng
Country: South Africa
Satyakama Paul has recently completed his PhD degree from the Department of Mechanical Engineering Science, University of Johannesburg. He holds a MBA degree from the University of Burdwan, and a B.Sc from the University of Calcutta, both from India. He also served as a researcher at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and the Indian Institute of Management, Indore. His research interests are in application of Computational Intelligence Algorithms in various disciplines of business management and social sciences. He has published in peer-reviewed conferences, journals, and a book chapter.