M5A1: —The Case For, or Against, New Orleans

MUST USE ALL ARTICLES AND MAKE SURE TO GO OFF FROM RUBRIC IN ORANGE BELOW FOR GRADING GUIDELINES. This article from this link will be needed to finish the paper:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-louisiana-a-choice-between-two-floods/2011/05/11/AFrjFotG_story.html

Sometimes one’s choices may involve catastrophic decisions and bear great risk and yet there can be no clear answer. For example, if a person gets a divorce, shutters a plant, sells a losing investment, or closes their business, will he or she be better off? The following case incorporates nearly all of the material you have covered this far and presents an example of one such choice where nearly all of the alternatives have a significant downside risk.

Review the following information from the article “A Cost-Benefit Analysis of the New Orleans Flood Protection System” by Stéphane Hallegatte (2005):

Hallegatte, an environmentalist, assigns a probability (p) of a Katrina-like hurricane of 1/130 in his cost-benefit analysis for flood protection. However, the levees that protect New Orleans also put other regions at greater risk. You may assume the frequency of other floods is greater than Katrina-like events (Vastag & Rein, 2011).
The new levees that were built in response to Katrina cost approximately fourteen billion dollars (in 2010). This is in addition to the direct costs of Katrina (eighty-one billion dollars in 2005).
50 percent of New Orleans is at or below sea level.
A 100-year event means that there is a 63 percent chance that such an event will occur within a 100-year period.
The following are the interested (anchored and/or biased) constituencies:

Residents of New Orleans—both those that can move and those who cannot move Residents of the surrounding floodplains at risk from New Orleans levees The Mayor of New Orleans The federal government—specifically taxpayers and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Assume that the availability heuristics make people more risk averse (populations drop, at least in the short term). Consider how this would affect the local economy.

You are an analyst at FEMA and are in charge of developing a recommendation for both the state and the local governments on whether or not to redevelop New Orleans.

Write a report with your recommendation. Address the following in your report:

Part A

Analyze the economics of New Orleans in light of the above parameters and develop your own Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) for rebuilding.
Evaluate the value of the CBA for each constituency and integrate these estimates into a scenario model and/or decision tree. Analyze the results.
Clearly each of these constituencies may both overlap and be prey to a variety of group dynamics internally. For one of these options, discuss the decision pitfalls to which they may be susceptible and make a recommendation on how to alleviate these pressures.
Starting with your CBA, estimate the relevant expected utility for the interested constituencies.

Note: You need not have absolute amounts but your relevant utilities should be proportional to one another.Hint: If you assume that your total CBA for New Orleans is fixed for each constituency (do not forget the overlaps), then each constituency will have a piece of the utility pie.

Part B

Make a case for or against rebuilding the city of New Orleans. This should be an executive summary; be concise and brief. Include exhibits.
Whether you are for or against, discuss how social heuristics could be used to your advantage, both ethically and unethically, in making your case. You may choose to fill the role of one of the constituents, if you prefer.

Write an 8–12-page
report in Word format. Apply APA standards to citation of sources. Use proper spelling and grammar throughout, and keep the text legible and balanced with visuals. Use the following file naming convention: LastnameFirstInitial_M5_A1 .

By Wednesday, July 7, 2013, deliver your assignment to the M5: Assignment 1 Dropbox.

Hallegatte, S. (2006). A cost-benefit analysis of the New Orleans flood protection system. Center for Environmental Sciences and Policy. Stanford University. Retrieved from http://hal.cirad.fr/docs/00/16/46/28/PDF/Hallegatte_NewOrleans_CBA9 Vastag, B., & Rein, L. (2011, May 11). In Louisiana, a choice between two floods. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/in-louisiana-a-choice-between-two- floods/2011/05/11/AFrjFotG_story.html

Assignment 1 Grading Criteria	Maximum Points
Analyze the economics of New Orleans in light of the given parameters and develop a Cost- Benefit Analysis (CBA) for rebuilding.
Evaluate the value of that CBA for each constituency and integrate these estimates into a scenario model and/or decision tree. Analyze the results.
Discuss the decision pitfalls to which constituencies may be susceptible and make a recommendation on how to alleviate those pressures.
Starting with the CBA, estimate the relevant expected utility for these parties.
Make a case for or against rebuilding the city of New Orleans. This should be an executive summary—be concise and brief. Include exhibits.
Discuss how social heuristics could be used to an advantage, both ethically and unethically, in making a case.
Estimate what percentage of the class was for, versus against, rebuilding and provide a confidence interval for the estimate.
Ensure academic writing, such as grammar, spelling, and attribution of sources, is appropriate.
Total:	300

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

Speed and Strategic Choice: How Managers Accelerate Decision Making
Eisenhardt, Kathleen M
California Management Review; Spring 1990; 32, 3; ProQuest Central
pg. 39

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

This course opened with the argument that as managers in an organization your most vital skills are analysis and decision making. Perhaps knowing what you now know, you can add to these vital skills the ability to recognize and repair the pitfalls, biases, and individual shortcomings that plague organizations and groups.

The role of the modern, and appropriately risk adjusted, manager is to fully reflect on the motivations and incentives that delay and undermine sound decision making and effective, objective management. Beyond this, you must understand how to deploy the tools you have learned to accurately assess risk/reward scenarios and to frame decisions in ways that quickly create sound and actionable alternatives.

Lastly, and most importantly, you must revisit how your own toolkits have been augmented and how some of your most important choices may be evaluated differently.

In order to achieve these goals you need to increase your knowledge a step further. Consider that in addition to all you have learned, speed, strategy, and a number of other factors play critical roles in your decision-making repertoire. Being a great decision maker must include the ability to make choices quickly, efficiently, and strategically. If not, you may run the risk of losing your competitive advantage.

In this module, you will learn that maintaining your competitive advantage requires not only precision but also speed. Choosing quickly demands that you keep a vigil over real-time operating information and rely on quick, comparative analysis to accelerate your decision making.

Great managers and decision makers resolve conflicts quickly and constructively. They rely on trusted, reliable counselors, not sycophants. Great, fast decision makers also use multiple alternatives and have backup plans—multiple options (frames) improve precision and offer a fallback position if the need arises. Finally, great decision makers incorporate the decision at hand with broader strategic considerations.

Ultimately, there is still one more role for the rational manager in organizations. That is, great decision makers facilitate great decision making.

As this course draws to an end, you will investigate ways in which you can bring structure and precision into your organization, striving towards your successes breeding success in others.

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