Operational Excellence Using Heuristics Exploratory Study

Purpose: Decision-making under complexities and uncertainty environment leads to the use of heuristics. Heuristics is a form of decision-making that occurs when problems become more complicated. There are different forms of decision-making: heuristics, satisficing, maximization, muddling through, and improvisation. In this research paper, the context of heuristics and its effect on making decisions are being discussed. A closer look into literature review on heuristics and satisficing has led to study how and in which conditions they are applied in organizations. Moreover, the impact of operational excellence models like Malcolm Baldrige and European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) on decision-making is also demonstrated.

Design/methodology/approach: A case study from Dubai Police is analyzed and discussed in order to integrate the operational excellence into decision-making. A number of 250 questionnaires were distributed on different Dubai Police departments and 175 questionnaires were obtained.

Findings: It is concluded that decisions taken by managers for operational excellence are positively correlated to the organizations’ excellence. Furthermore, the decision-making can be also influenced if applied in dark triad, the case of emergency, or in case of ignorance.

Research limitations/implications: Applying heuristics tool can result in some biases. Hence, certain tactics can be used to mitigate the biases resulted from heuristics.

Originality/value: This research paper demonstrates the case study of Dubai Police to examine the positive effect of organization’s excellence on decisions taken by managers for improving performance and ensuring continuous improvement meeting its strategic plans.

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Heuristics, Operational Excellence, Malcolm Baldrige, EFQM