Real-Life Decision Making -- Solution
You decide to tell the client that some of the data could be wrong.
In the middle of the presentation -- just as the bad data is about to be
presented to the client -- you blurt out that it's not valid.
Your professor is livid. How dare you question him! He tells you that if
you and your team had been his employees he would have fired you. However,
since you have done all your work at an excellent level of quality and you
have promised to learn from your mistakes, he gives you an A anyway.
This is the decision that Subbu Sivaramakrishnan would make. He is an
associate professor of marketing research and also conducts market
research for companies.
Sivaramakrishnan has faced a similar situation. "I once conducted a study
and the person said, 'Subbu, I want you to show this [particular result],
and my response was, 'Well, I cannot show you this -- I can only check to
see if this is true'.
"Quite often what happens in the real world is that managers want some
research conducted and they already have the decision made in their mind,
and now they're looking for data to support it," says Sivaramakrishnan. "And
this does happens fairly often... They want some reassurance or they want
a marketing research study that supports their decision so they can go to
their boss and say, 'Look, I told you.'"