Time Pacing: Strategic Decision-making for Time-based Competition

Cost and quality will be necessary, but not sufficient determinants of commercial success. In the fast changing 21^st century, speed and agility will become increasingly pivotal, time-based competition (TBC) will intensify. TBC involves compressing the time needed to perform activities associated with delivering high-quality products and services to customers. The focus is on the total product cycle, including planning, design, manufacturing, procurement, marketing, and distribution. The rationale is that by reducing the time in any of the product cycle stages, products are brought to market sooner, productivity is higher, and customer service is improved. However, all of these actions depend on a right strategic decision-making (SDM). In current rapidly changing world, it is necessary for enterprises to make strategic decisions for TBC. In other words, fast strategic decision-making (FSDM) in rapidly changing environments. Where, fast means an appropriate rapid instead of the faster the better. That is, SDM for TBC refers to making right and high-quality strategic decisions in an appropriate time rather than the quicker the better, or in other words, do right things in an appropriate time-time pacing or adjusting to changing circumstances. As is known to all, SDM is the most fundamental and most important of all management skills. The very pulse beat of a company is the speed with which it makes and implements strategic decisions. The success or failure of a SDM relies on the choice of chance or opportunity for optimal decision-making in dynamic changing environments. Especially, sometimes decision-makers have a high pressure in time, and have to get trade-off between the information acquisition and the chance or opportunity for decision-making. However, how to accomplish this successfully? The goal of this paper is to present such an understanding. In view of this consideration, the general distribution function of probability density of chance for decis- ion-making was established by taking advantages of the rule of maximum entropy in this paper. And then, the chance for optimal decision-making was determined through the posed decision-making efficacy function. And some relative discussions and suggests about the chance for optimal decision-making were also discussed