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How to Structure and Present your Decision Report

There are many equally effective ways in which a decision report can be
structured and presented. You may have a favorite structure that has
worked well. We, however, insist on the following structure because a
decision report is an instructional exercise, and we would like you to go
systematically through all the processes involved in rational decision
making.

1. Situation Analysis
2. The Problem
3. The Options
4. Criteria for Evaluation
5. Evaluation of Options
6. The Recommendation
7. Action Plan
8. Contingency Plan
9. Exhibits (if any)

Executive Summary

The executive summary is not a statement merely indicating what you will
find in the report, but a miniature report. So ideally it contains the first six
out of the nine parts of a report as shown above. The ES should not
exceed ten per cent of the full report.
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The Report

Situation Analysis

This is possibly the most important part of your report because the rest of
the report is built on it. It shows your reading or analysis of the situation. It
is neither a description of the situation nor a summary of the case facts.
This is where you zero in on the facts that you consider relevant for
decision making and indicate the relationships that you perceive between
those facts. If you analyze the situation well, you will have no difficulty
defining the decision problem or the managerial challenge faced by the
protagonist in the case.

The Problem

Here you articulate briefly and precisely the problem to which a solution
has to be found or the managerial challenge that has to be met by the
protagonist. It flows from your analysis of the situation. Therefore, there is
nothing surprising about different students seeing different problems in the
same situation.

The Options

Once you define the problem, the next step is to generate different ways of
solving it. These are the options available to the decision-maker. The ideal
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options are mutually exclusive, that is, if you opt for A, you cannot also
opt for B or C. If, for example, you want to buy a TV set, the options are
the different TV sets available for you to buy. It is obvious that choosing
any one of the TV sets automatically rules out buying any other TV sets.

For good decision-making it is important to generate credible options,

options that have a reasonable chance of being adopted. This is where
your creativity should help you.

Criteria for Evaluation

Faced with different options, how do we identify the best? By applying

criteria. Criteria are the norms that an option should pass for it to be
adopted as the solution. In the TV purchase example, the norms could be
price, quality, brand, physical size, and after-sales service. These criteria
are not universal: they stem from the analysis of a given situation. Price,
for example, may not be a consideration at ail in some families while it
may be the most important criterion in some others.

Identifying the best option is relatively simple if there is just one criterion.
If there are multiple criteria you should prioritize them; in other words you
should indicate which criterion is the most important and which criteria are
less important. If an option fails the most important criterion, it cannot be
adopted even if it meets all the other criteria.

The prioritization of the criteria stems from the analysis of the situation.
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You may need to justify your prioritization unless it is very obvious.

Evaluation of Options

Once you have prioritized the criteria, you must apply them to ALL the
options identified. It is not enough to apply them to one or the most
promising options.

The Recommendation

Now you are ready to make your recommendation. It is the option that has
passed all the criteria you have identified. If none of the options clear all
the criteria, the option that meets most of the criteria, especially the most
important one(s), is the one that you recommend to the decision-maker. If
the options don’t pass the criteria, you may want to go back to the analysis
of the situation, generate more options, and repeat the process.

Action Plan

Once you recommend what to do, follow it up with how to put that
recommendation into action. This helps you think through the
consequences of your recommendation and at times forces you to revise it.
A well laid out action plan helps the reader take your recommendation
seriously and adopt it without hesitation.
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Contingency Plan

With the action plan, your report is complete. We, however, ask you to go
an extra step. Anticipate things that may go wrong when the
recommendation is put into action. One contingency in the TV purchase
example might be a temporary shortage of the chosen size and brand if the
situation analysis had hinted at some production or distribution problems.
You need to suggest what to do in such a contingency. That is your
contingency plan. Your contingency plan should NOT be adoption of one
of the rejected options.

A good contingency plan enhances your report. You shouldn’t, however,

look for outlandish contingencies just to fill in a slot in the report.

Exhibits

Exhibits are tables, charts, graphs, worksheets, and other similar

collections of data which support the argument in your report.
Incorporating such data as running text in the report may make the report
unnecessarily lengthy and less readable. Some reports may not have any
exhibits while others may have several.

If you have any exhibits, give it brief, explanatory titles and number them
according to the order in which they are referred to in the body of the
report. If you have only one or two very small exhibits, you may put them
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in the body of the report, close to where they are referred to. But if the
exhibits are long, place them at the end of the report in the same order as
they have been referred to. Your decision on where to put the exhibits
should be based on readability.

Difference between descriptive writing and critical/analytical writing

Descriptive writing Critical/analytical writing

States what happened Identifies the significance

States what something is like Evaluates strengths and weaknesses

States the order in which things happened Makes reasoned judgements

Says how to do something Argues a case according to evidence

Explains what a theory says Shows why something is relevant

Explains how something works Indicates why something will work (best)

Notes the method used Indicates whether something is appropria

Says when something occurred Identifies why the timing is important

States the different components Weighs the importance of component par

States options Gives reason for the selection of options

Lists details Evaluates the relative significance of deta

Lists in any order Lists information in order of importance

Gives information Draws conclusions