CASE STUDY

Case Study for decision making

1 Executive summary
This report is made with the purpose of analyzing the decision-making practice of Nugan, the managing director in the Diversified Agricultural Company Nugan Group, from the perspective of personality and values.
Decision-making is essential and regarded as the driving force for the development of a company. Therefore, since the takeover of the company, Nugan made many decisions to push forward the business. In Nugan Group, the decisions were made mainly by Nugan. However, it is hard to say that those decisions are ineffective because of bonded rationality. Each of her decision proves right and brings huge success to the Group, for example, she decided to take over the company after her husband’s death as an inexperienced woman without any business trainings. The struggling business emerges strong after the golden touch of Nugan. Striking a deal with Japan leads the company onto a way of smooth development. These were all due to the strong personality and values of Nugan.
From the perspective of personality, Nugan’s somewhat domineering and authoritative decision-making practice arouses the dissatisfaction of employees. But Nugan Group is still a strong cohesive unit, workers are wholeheartedly devoted and committed to her, and the decisions can also be successfully implemented. This phenomenon is attributed to the values of Nugan. She is sensitive to the needs and troubles of workers and generous to those who sacrifice a lot to the company. Therefore, strong personality and humanitarian values together contribute to the huge success of Nugan Group.
The following sections will analyze the decision-making practice of Nugan from the perspective of personality and values with relevant frameworks and models.
2． Introduction
A series of decisions made by Nugan contributed to the huge success of the Group. Being an inexperienced and business training-free woman, she courageously took over the company after the death of her husband. Despite the controversy and pressure from the company inside, Nugan managed to run the business with her straight-forward manner. During the years of recession, she adopted hands-on style which helped her win the heart of workers. Despite the repulsive management style, many workers expressed their gratitude and admiration to their female boss because of her maternal feelings toward subordinates. Nugan combined her personality and values perfectly together, because of this, Nugan Group was able to pull through troubles and performed successive wonders.
3 Models about Personality and Value
3.1 personality
There is no need to further emphasize the importance of personality and values in the process of decision-making. These two factors play pivotal roles in decision-making, and many scholars have put forward theories to illustrate this point. Therefore, this part will provide some models concerning personality and values.
On mentioning personality, one of the most famous models is the Big Five Model put forward by Lewis Goldberg, Andrew Comrey and John M. Didman on the basis of personality tests (Digman, 1990). Since then this model was widely accepted as an important theory to make in-depth exploration into human personality. This model listed five representative features of personality, they are openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism respectively(Matthews＆Deary& Whiteman,2003). Each factor has its own characteristics; openness reflects intellectual curiosity, innovativeness and preference for novel ideas and creative thoughts. Conscientiousness shows the ambition for accomplishments in a planned and well-organized manner. Extroversion, as its name suggests, means to adopt a positive attitude toward especially difficulties, is assertive in decisions and always energetic and sociable to arouse the enthusiasm of other people. Agreeableness describes a sympathetic and amiable attitude toward others; people boasting this feature of personality are cooperative instead of being skeptical and suspicious. Neuroticism means people are sensitive to changes and easily reveal unpleasant emotions such as anger, sorrow, anxiety and depression (Poropat, 2009).

Myers Briggs Type Indicator Model was proposed by Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers. This model was established after an extensive study of Jung’s work, Psychological Types (Kaplan& Saccuzzo,2009). MBTI summarized the psychological differences proposed by Jung into four opposite pairs, they are extrovert＆introvert, sensing＆intuition, thinking＆feeling , judging ＆perceiving. Unlike Big Five Model which concerns personality traits, MBTI is about personality type. However, this model is controversial and arouses much criticism for its inaccuracy, for example, the same people can have quite different personality types after receiving tests at different times.
3.2 Values
Values are psychologically determined and they are related to people’s attitudes in every aspect. Values vary greatly among people and cultures. There are four types of values: moral values, ideological values, social values and aesthetic values (Santrock, 2007). There are also some scholars classifying values in a professional way. Rokeach(1973) put forward two types of values. Terminal values refer to the goal that people aim to achieve during lifetime; instrumental values mean the modes of behavior adopted to realize the terminal goal. The terminal values are subdivided into personal values and social values, and the instrumental values are further divided into competence values and moral values.
After this detailed introduction to personality and values, it is safe to say that it inevitably affects people’s behavioral styles and attitudes toward things. Carlson (2010) said “values then relates to what one wants and in what order one wants them ”, it determines the measures people take in the process of achieving goals. Personality and values are important factors in decision-making, thus, the following section will analyze Nugan’s decisions from the perspective of personality and values.
4. Decisions made by Nugan from the perspective of personality and values
4.1.1 The decision to treat her workers in working hours and daily life
From the classification of personality types made in Big Five Model, we can judge that Nugan is a open-minded, conscientious, extroverted and agreeable woman. She has the courage to try new things and carries out her plan in a well-organized manner. After her husband’s death, she made an awful decision, which was to take over the company; this practice reflects her strong personality. Being an inexperienced woman without any business training, she was under pressure of being suspected from inside.
To make workers follow her leadership, she is very strict with workers and straightforward with their mistakes. Her management style aroused the dissatisfaction of workers. However, due to her strictness, many decisions are implemented effectively and contribute to the success of the business.
Values refer to the attitude toward people and things(Hofstede,1983). Rokeach(1973) stated that instrumental values are the preferable measures taken to realize the terminal values. Workers’ dissatisfaction with her is well counteracted by her amiable and easygoing manner in dealing with workers. In daily life, she is sensitive to the needs of workers and always ready to help them out of trouble. Therefore, her workers express their admiration and gratitude because of her generosity and kindness. In this way, she wins the heart of workers and ensures the smooth development of the business. After years of efforts, Nugan Group developed from the struggling state into a successful business.
4.1.2 Strengths and weaknesses of the decision
The strengths of decision are obvious. To those workers who defy her leadership, her strong measures can curb their resistance. Her toughness can ensure the carryout of her decisions during the hard time. Many achievements are made because of her absolute authority over workers. The values she cherishes to deal with workers prove wonderful. The placatory measures she took won the faithfulness of workers, therefore, they devoted themselves enthusiastically to work and pull the company through difficulties.
However, there are also potential weaknesses. Nugan’s unchallengeable authority in decision-making process goes contrary to the strategy of groupthink(Cain,2012). Individual’s bonded rationality may affect the feasibility of decisions. Too strict with workers and too straightforward with their errors may silence their voice of different opinions and original ideas. Homogeneous decisions reduce constructive conflicts and impair the company’s creativeness and innovativeness.
4.2.1 to build a winery
Nugan decided to expand her business to wine-making; she located her winery in the Riverina wine-making region. However, some people said it is a risky strategy, because there is a dense distribution of wineries in this region. What’s worse, domestic market is in recession; all industries are facing discounting and decreasing margins. Being an extrovert of open-mindedness and conscientiousness, she is full of creative ideas. She designed the winery in a style of European vaulted ceiling barrel room, which is a magnificent structure raising from the flat landscape. She also decided to build a restaurant and hold tastings. She knew well the disadvantages of starting a winery, but she put forward some creative and feasible ideas to counteract the shortcomings. She always does things in a well-organized and planed manner. This reflects her open-minded and conscientious personality.
In terms of values, instrumental values mean the preferable measures taken for terminal values (John,1938). She knew how to cater to the needs of customers and create competitive edge over rivals. The imposing structure of the winery reflects her aesthetic values and holding tastings indicates her social values.
4.2.2 Strengths and weaknesses
This decision also has its strengths and weaknesses. Its strengths are as follows: Nugan tries her best to create advantages over competitors, for example, unique design and attractive services. These measures are effective to offset the unencouraging factors for example, economic recession, decreasing profit margin and fierce competition. However, despite her constructive ideas, the unencouraging economic climate indicates the hard way ahead.
Therefore, the weaknesses of the decision can not be neglected. Nugan’s banker, Raymond Puck was optimistic about her decision, but also revealed his worry: there is still a level of risk because these things probably only really to work out positively from year six and seven, because the life circle of wine-making industry(Walker, 2005). That’s to say, brilliant ideas and hard work can not guarantee the performance of business in economic recession.
5 conclusion
The above sections analyze Nugan’s decisions from the perspective of personality and values. Nugan is a business woman full of original ideas. All her decisions proved sound and contributed to the huge success of Nugan Group. From the perspective of personality, her oped-mindedness, conscientiousness and decisiveness ensure the successful implementation of decisions. In terms of values, her agreeableness wins her the faithfulness of workers. That’s the reason accounting for her success.
However, her authoritarian management style deprives workers of their voice. The limitations of individual’s bonded rationality can not guarantee accuracy of all her decisions. Homogeneous decisions reduce the constructive conflicts. Therefore, what Nugan should do is to encourage different voices. Heterogeneous decisions are beneficial to reduce mistakes to the minimum and maximize profits.
6 recommendations
To overcome weaknesses in her decisions, there are several measures to be taken.
Not to be too straightforward with workers’ mistakes, which will suppress their enthusiasm to put forward constructive ideas?
To adopt the Groupthink method to encourage workers to express their thoughts and ideas
Nugan should encourage workers to participate in the decision-making process. To attach importance to each idea, even it sounds absurd, maybe it can offer inspirations to your problem.
Before making decisions, one has to take into consideration all factors. Some irreversible factors can not be turned to your advantages despite your most constructive decisions. Therefore, one can not be optimistic enough to overlook unfavorable conditions.

7 Reference list
Carlson, Neil, et al. 2010. Psychology the Science of Behaviour, p. 438. Pearson Canada, United States of America. ISBN 978-0-205-64524-4.

Cain, Susan (January 13, 2012). "The rise of the new groupthink". New York Times.

Digman, J.M. (1990). "Personality structure: Emergence of the five-factor model". Annual Review of Psychology 41: 417–440. doi:10.1146/annurev.ps.41.020190.002221.

Hofstede, Geert (December 1983). "Culture's Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values". Administrative Science Quarterly (Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University) 28 (4): 625–629. .

John Dewey(1938). Theory of Valuation. Used for terms but not for examples or further discussion of them.

Kaplan, R.M., & Saccuzzo, D.P. (2009). Psychological testing: Principle, applications, and issues. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

Matthews, G., Deary, I. J., & Whiteman, M. C. (2003). Personality Traits. Cambridge University Press. Page 24.

Poropat, A. E. (2009). A meta-analysis of the five-factor model of personality and academic performance. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 322–338.

Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. New York: Free Press.

Santrock, J.W. (2007). A Topical Approach to Life-Span Development. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill

Walker, J(2005). Second Harvest, Business Review Weekly, John Fairfax holdings Ltd, 2 June, p.30.