Why decision makers do not always use available information?

Answer 1

Ambivalence is for the timid, why fuzzy up a decision with facts? That is the mindset of a few that avoid the facts. However, many avoid the available information because they are afraid of the truth and believe that if they don't know about it, it will go away. The best way to make a decision includes being knowledgeable about the decision.

ANSWER: When the available information is unsubstantiated evidence or gossip it can often be of little use in decision making. Sometimes the available information is substantiated evidence and the testimonies are sworn oaths and yet still a decision maker will ignore the information and go with their intuitions because they are perspicacious and are looking at a paradigm outside of the available information. Supply side economics often supplies excellent examples of this sort of decision making. One example was Rupert Murdoch's decision to buy the broadcast rights to the NFL that CBS had owned for so long. When the NFL raised their price the Accountants at CBS gave all the available information and based on that information CBS declined to renew their contract with the NFL because the advertising revenue raised would not cover the cost of doing business with the NFL. Rupert Murdoch stepped in and paid the asking price for his fledgling television network FOX. How could a new upstart television find the advertising revenue to pay for the NFL where a well established and much respected television network couldn't?

Fox network, of course, could not generate enough in advertising revenue to pay for the NFL, but that was not the paradigm Murdoch was using. Fox at that time had two programs that aired on Sunday nights that Murdoch believed had appeal to the television viewing public but lacked the proper exposure. What Murdoch was counting on was that people who never tuned into FOX, but do now because of football games would stick around after the games and watch these shows which were the Simpson's and the X-Files. Murdoch was right, people stayed and watched these shows with increasing regularity and the revenue for all advertising rose while the fledgling upstart network became one of the major players in Broadcast Television all because the decision maker ignored available information.