Essay 1996 Everest Case Study

In deciding to abandon the turnaround time, each leader made a costly mistake by turning what should have been a programmed decision into a nonprogrammed one. In management theory, programme decisions are routine ones for which a manger has an established rule, whereas nonprogrammed new and complex decisions that require novel or creative solutions (Sniderman et al., 2007, p. 242). The decision to settle on and adhere to a strict turnaround time was arguably the most important rule that the leaders should have implemented and enforced within their teams. Hall himself had turned back a climber named Doug Hanson just 300 feet from the summit the previous year because they had reached the turnaround time; on this summit attempt, Hall and Hansen reached the summit by 4pm, and died while trying attempting a descent. Fisher ignored his own health problems and pushed his clients upward past the generally-accepted turnaround time as well. In pushing for the summit in this way, one may argue that Fisher and Hall’s decisions were based on the Intuitive Decision-Making Model over the Rational Decision-Making Model, which would have taken into account risks such as loss of life and loss of future business in calculating the costs and benefits of going further. If the competition and media scrutiny played