2013年自考英語(二)課文譯文:什么是決策

　　什么是決策?

　　A decision is a choice made from among alternative courses of action that are available. The purpose of making a decision is to establish and achieve organizational goals and objectives. The reason for making a decision is that a problem exists, goals or objectives are wrong, or something is standing in the way of accomplishing them.

　　決策是從可供挑選的行動方案中作出選擇，目的在于確定并實現(xiàn)組織機構(gòu)的目標或目的。之所以要決策是因為存在問題，或是目標或目的不對，或某種東西妨礙目標或目的實現(xiàn)。

　　Thus the decision-making process is fundamental to management. Almost everything a manager does involves decisions, indeed, some suggest that the management process is decision making. Although managers cannot predict the future, many of their decisions require that they consider possible future events. Often managers must make a best guess at what the future will be and try to leave as little as possible to chance, hut since uncertainty is always there, risk accompanies decisions. Sometimes the consequences of a poor decision are slight; at other times they are serious.

　　因此，決策過程對于管理人員非常重要。管理者所做的一切幾乎都與決策有關(guān)，事實上，有人甚至認為管理過程就是決策過程。雖然決策者不能預測未來，但他們的許多決策要求他們必須考慮未來可能會發(fā)生的情況。管理者必須對未來的事情作出最佳的猜測，并使偶然性盡可能少地發(fā)生。但因為總是存在著未知情況，所以決策往往伴隨著風險。有時失誤的決策帶來的后果不很嚴重，但有時就會不堪設想。

　　Choice is the opportunity to select among alternatives. If there is no choice, there is no decision to be made. Decision making is the process of choosing, and many decisions have a broad range of choice. For example, a student may be able to choose among a number of different courses in order to implement the decision to obtain a college degree. For managers, every decision has constraints based on policies, procedures, laws, precedents, and the like. These constraints exist at all levels of the organization.

　　選擇就是從多種選項中進行取舍，沒有選擇，就沒有決策。決策本身就是一個選擇的過程，許多決策有著很廣的選擇范圍。例如，學生為了實現(xiàn)自己獲得學位的目標，可能會從多門課程中進行選擇，對于管理者來說，每一個決策都受到政策、程序、法律、慣例等方面的制約，這些制約存在于一個組織的各個部門里。

　　Alternatives are the possible courses of action from which choices can be made. If there are no alternatives, there is no choice and, therefore, no decision. If no alternatives are seen, often it means that a thorough job of examining the problems has not been done. For example, managers sometimes treat problems in an either/or fashion; this is their way of simplifying complex problems. But the tendency to simplify blinds them to other alternatives.

　　選項就是可供選擇的種種可行的行動方案。沒有選項，就沒有選擇，因而也就沒有決策。如果看不到任何選項，這意味著還沒有對問題進行徹底的研究。例如，管理者有時會用“非此即彼”的方式處理問題，這是他們簡化問題的方法。這種簡化問題的習慣常常使他們看不到其他的選項。

　　At the managerial level, decision making includes limiting alternatives as well as identifying them, and the range is from highly limited to practically unlimited.

　　在管理這個層次上，制定決策包括：識別選項和縮小選項范圍，其范圍小到微乎其微，大到近乎無限。

　　Decision makers must have some way of determining which of several alternatives is best -- that is, which contributes the most to the achievement of organizational goals. An organizational goal is an end or a state of affairs the organization seeks to reach. Because individuals (and organizations) frequently have different ideas about how to attain the goals, the best choice may depend on who makes the decision. Frequently, departments or units within an organization make decisions that are good for them individually but that are less than optimal for the larger organization. Called suboptimization, this is a trade-off that increases the advantages to one unit or function but decreases the advantages to another unit or function. For example, the marketing manager may argue effectively for an increased advertising budget. In the larger scheme of things, however, increased funding for research to improve the products might be more beneficial to the organization.

　　決策者必須有某種方法來斷定幾種選項中的最佳選項，即哪個選項最有利于實現(xiàn)其組織的目標。組織的目標是指該組織努力完成或達到的目標或現(xiàn)狀。由于個人(或組織)對于怎樣實現(xiàn)其目標的方式都有不同的見解，最佳的選擇就在于決策者了。常常是一個組織的下屬部門做出的決策對自己有利，而對上一級的部門來說，就不是較佳選擇了。這種增加部門的局部利益而減少其他部門的局部利益所作出的權(quán)衡，叫做局部優(yōu)化。例如，市場營銷經(jīng)理為增加廣告預算可能會講得頭頭是道，但從更大的布局來看，增加優(yōu)化產(chǎn)品的研究經(jīng)費也許對組織更有利。

　　These trade-offs occur because there are many objectives that organizations wish to attain simultaneously. Some of these objectives are more important than others, but the order and degree of importance often vary from person to person and from department to department. Different managers define the same problem in different terms. When presented with a common case, sales managers tend to see sales problems, production managers see production problems, and so on.

　　這種權(quán)衡的存在是因為組織想要同時達到的目標很多，其中有些比另一些重要，但其重要性與排序是因人和部門而異的。不同的管理者會對同一問題持不同的看法。面對同樣一種情況時，銷售經(jīng)理傾向于銷售方面的問題，而生產(chǎn)經(jīng)理則著眼于生產(chǎn)方面的問題，如此等等。

　　The ordering and importance of multiple objectives is also based, in part, on the values of the decision maker. Such values are personal; they are hard to understand, even by the individual, because they are so dynamic and complex. In many business situations different people's values about acceptable degrees of risk and profitability cause disagreement about the correctness of decisions.

　　多種目標的重要性與排序還部分地取決于決策者的價值觀,這些價值觀具有個人色彩,令人難以捉摸,甚至其本人也很難講清楚，因為價值觀是動態(tài)和復雜的,在很多業(yè)務場合,對于風險與收益可接受的程度往往會使不同價值觀的人對其決策的正確性產(chǎn)生不同意見。

　　People often assume that a decision is an isolated phenomenon. But from a systems point of view, problems have multiple causes, and decisions have intended and unintended

　　consequences. An organization is an ongoing entity, and a decision made today may have consequences far into the future. Thus the skilled manager looks toward the future consequences of current decisions.

　　人們常常認為，決策是一個孤立的現(xiàn)象。但從系統(tǒng)的觀點看，問題的產(chǎn)生有多種原因，而且決策有預期的和意料之外的結(jié)果。一個組織是一個發(fā)展中的實體，今天做出的決策可能會在很遠的將來才會有結(jié)果。因此，老練的管理人員要放眼于當前決策在將來可能會產(chǎn)生的后果。

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