Fish or Cut Bait: Corporate Decision-Making under Uncertainty

Abstract

Managerial decision making frequently takes place under less than optimal conditions. “Fish or Cut Bait …” reflects an actual decision-making situation in Subsidiary X of Corporation Y. The department heads responsible for implementing, or rejecting, a newly developed process were inhibited by unknown risk factors and had difficulty qualitatively organizing known data. With the benefit of both hindsight and detachment, the author suggests what decision should have been made on the basis of all then-known data.