Judgment in Managerial Decision Making Book Report

A year later, Soviet's premier in collaboration with Cuba installed nuclear missiles on the Cuban island, a few miles from the U.S. This decision triggered the Missile Crisis in Cuba and many global leaders feared the possibility of a nuclear war (Blight & Kornbluh, 2007).

Focalism / focusing illusion played a part in this failure

As evidenced above, Kennedy's reign offers potent examples of the psychological theory about flawed focusing illusion (group decision-making). Because the group culture overruled the internal agreement, members became unrealistic. In this case, the products of focusing illusions played a part in the failure of the invasion. President Kennedy's poor decision-making practices led to insufficient solutions to the issues of the invasion. Because the president and his advisors limited their discussions to few alternative courses of action, they disregarded further consideration of alternatives, which could have been worthy to the course. The team ignored all viable solutions to issues, often overlooking better solutions. They failed to re-examine the original course of action, which had been preferred by the majority after the president learnt of drawbacks and risks they had not considered initially.Kennedy's advisors in the Bay of Pigs project accepted the flawed plan of the CIA, without criticism. The leaders underestimated the political capability and the military of Fidel Castro while overestimating their own (Craughwell & Phelps, 2008). This was extremely alarming because the team was not thinking methodically about the impacts of their decisions. This created disastrous repercussions relating to policy making in the government. The disaster could have easily been averted if the aspect of group thinking was avoided or limited to other scenarios.

References

Blight, J.G., & Kornbluh, P. (2007). Politics of illusion: The Bay of Pigs invasion reexamined. Boulder, Colo: Lynne Rienner Pub.

Craughwell, T.J., & Phelps, M.W. (2008). Failures of the presidents: From the Whiskey Rebellion and War of 1812 to the Bay of Pigs and war in Iraq. Beverly, MA: Fair Winds Press.

Higgins, T. (2009). The perfect failure: Kennedy, Eisenhower, and the CIA at the Bay of Pigs.….....