Management, 11th Edition

Chapter 7. Information and Decision Making

Chapter 7 Study Questions

1. What is the role of information in the management process?

2. How do managers use information to make decisions?

3. What are the steps in the decision-making process?

4. What are current issues in managerial decision making?

Learning From Others, Decisions Turn Potential into Achievement

Decisions ... hunches ... achievements? It's all about being tuned into the environment. That's a message that seems well learned by Tom Szaky. He has ridden the roller coaster of all roller coasters, taking ideas for "sustainability," "green," and "recycling" from dorm room banter to the shelves of Wal-Mart. If you read Tom Szaky's book Revolution in a Bottle, you enter the world of "upcycling"—the art, if you will, of turning waste that isn't recyclable into reusable packaging.^[404]

Szaky is what many call an "eco-capitalist"—someone who brings environmentalism into the world of business and consumers. While a freshman at Princeton University, he ordered a million red worms with the goal of learning how to use them to recycle campus waste. In conversations with classmate Jon Beyer, the original idea shifted to creating and selling liquid fertilizer made from worm excrement. But they couldn't afford the expensive plastic bottles for packaging. More conversations, this time with entrepreneur Robin Tator, led to a new firm called TerraCycle with a mission to "find a meaningful use for waste materials."

Szaky's original liquid fertilizer became TerraCycle ...