Question

using the topic "selecting a collage to attend" compare and contrast "rational" and "behavioral" decsion making models using any two of our criteria

Answer 1

To understand these two decision making models in a better way, we'll take the examples of two students selecting their college to attend.

Assume there is a Student is in a search for a good management college. He especially is thinking or pursuing operational management and thus is very specific and keen about finding a college which would have this subject. He thoughts of researching and sorting out all the colleges available in the city teaching the same subject. He then would think of arranging them as per their cost, developing various alternatives, conducting a lot of research and then finally he would choose the college he wants to study in because that one college would satisfy all of his needs and wants. This decision is an example of rational decision making which would have an assumption that the decision taken are perfect: it would consider all the information and alternatives, they assumed they have time, resources and abilities to make the best decision which we have saw the student making to select the college for his choice.

On the other hand, this is what actually happend with the same student mentioned above as he started searching for his college. When he started researching and studying for various alternatives, he had this major car accident because of which he was given 3-4 months of bed rest. Due to this, he wasn't able to find a good college for himself. As he is not able to walk properly, he found a college which is the closest to his home for studying regardless of the fact how good or bad is that college is and whether it has operational management as a subject or not. This is the behavioral approach for decision making. In this model, real life situations are taken consideration of. We cannot make a decision assuming everything is perfect. What actually the life throws at us, we have to take the decision in accordance with that which makes our decisions different from assumptions because of different conditions and situations.