Different approaches to decision-making

Your client, a large European holding company, which had acquired chains of do-it-yourself
(DIY) stores in Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, has announced it plans to sell off
these chains. The IT Director for the stores in France is worried about his future with the company and has
asked you to provide him with a high-level overview of the DIY stores in the United States. Create a visual
representation of the following data:
(The table with all the data will be downloaded)
In what way might these annual sales numbers be misleading? Explain your answer.
Part Two: The Executive-level decision to a.) consolidate the country chains onto one, shared, IT
platform was subsequently replaced by a decision to b.) sell the country chains to an as yet unidentified
buyer (or buyers). Considering the frameworks of normative, descriptive, prescriptive, and naturalistic
decision making (described in sections 10.1 and 10.11 of the course text), which approach would you say
has been characteristic of the holding company executives? Explain the rationale for your opinion.
Part Three: The decision to sell the store country chains instead of merging them onto a modified version
of one of their internally-developed IT systems initially suggested that the internally-developed system
used as the base for supporting all five countries would need to considered in a new light, and that it
should be modified to be very open and flexible, so that the new, shared IT system would be more attractive to the as-yet unidentified buyer (or buyers). However, subsequent discussions have questioned
whether this is the right approach. Some believe that no changes should be made to the current IT
systems (which each country chain had developed in-house) since it was not known who the buyer(s)
might be and what would make the IT systems most attractive to them. Others believe the correct
approach would be to convert to a commercial off-the-shelf suite of applications, which could then,
theoretically, be used by any buyer(s). Still others prefer the first idea, which was to merge all the country
chains onto one, shared (but modified) in-house-developed system. As the consultant, what do you
recommend regarding: 1. Who should be involved in the decision? (refer to section 10.5), 2. Which
cognitive styles would be best-suited for solving this problem? (refer to Table 9.1), and 3. Which creative
approaches to analysis would you recommend? (refer to sections 9.6, 9.7, 9.8, and 9.9).

Project Requirements:
1. Create a visual representation of the store
data contained in the table in part one, which
makes the relationships apparent.
2. Explain how the sales numbers in part one
might be misleading.
3. Explain which decision-making rationale has
been characteristic of the holding company
executives.
4. Identify who should be involved in the IT
Platform decision and explain why.
5. Identify which cognitive styles would be best suited
for solving this problem?
6. Identify which creative approaches to analysis
you would recommend and explain why.