PROBLEM SOLVING & DECISION MAKING

Change and uncertainty have become an inevitable part of life, the world is more turbulent than it used to be, and is susceptible to rapid and often unpredictable change, creating the need for more creative problem solving than ever in order to survive in these conditions. In this new edition Mick Hicks addresses the need for a new range of problem solving and decision making strategies for dealing with the problems of the modern business environment. He identifies that there is no one problem solving process or technique that is universally applicable to all the types of problem situation, and presents the processes which have had the most impact on improving our problem solving abilities, provides detailed background information about them (including illustrative case studies) to give a practical guide for their use and shows how the different approaches complement each other, thus providing a complete problem solving system to tackle almost all types of problem situation. Change and uncertainty have become an inevitable part of life, the world is more turbulent than it used to be, and is susceptible to rapid and often unpredictable change, creating the need for more creative problem solving than ever in order to survive in these conditions. In this new edition Mick Hicks addresses the need for a new range of problem solving and decision making strategies for dealing with the problems of the modern business environment. He identifies that there is no one problem solving process or technique that is universally applicable to all the types of problem situation, and presents the processes which have had the most impact on improving our problem solving abilities, provides detailed background information about them (including illustrative case studies) to give a practical guide for their use and shows how the different approaches complement each other, thus providing a complete problem solving system to tackle almost all types of problem situation.

Chapter 1: What constitutes a problem Chapter 2: How to go about tackling a problem Chapter 3: Creative abilities Chapter 4: Before problem solving Chapter 5: Data gathering Chapter 6: Problem identification Chapter 7: Ideation Chapter 8: Problem resolution Chapter 9: Solution implementation and change management Chapter 10: The Creative Problem Solving Process (Synectics) Chapter 11: Soft Systems Approach (SSM) Chapter 12: Integration of Synectics and SSM Chapter 13: The dynamics of group problem solving Chapter 14: Creativity and related topics Chapter 15: Software and problem solving Chapter 16: Information Sources References Index