Abstract: Decision-making ability, as the core application ability of MBA training, should be systematically reflected in all aspects of the training program. For teaching purposes, seven dimensions of decision-making ability should be defined: anti-structural ability, social norm recognition ability, self-confidence ability, decision-making rule application ability, risk perception stability, anti-sunk cost ability and path independence ability; Give priority to role-playing, simulation training, seminars and case studies in teaching methods; In the teaching effect, three methods are used to measure the teaching effect: international general measurement, course content measurement and work application measurement.

Keywords: decision-making ability, MBA teaching purpose, teaching method, teaching effect

In recent years, the research and reform of MBA education in China are advancing day by day. Some schools improve students' ability to integrate theory with practice from the reform of tutorial system, some expand students' thinking and vision from the internationalization of education, and some emphasize the cultivation of innovative ability. No matter from which point of view, the universal orientation of MBA education is to cultivate applied management talents in industrial and commercial enterprises, and decision-making ability constitutes the main part of the core work ability of industrial and commercial enterprise managers, which is inevitable.

In marketing, production, research and development, manpower, finance and other aspects, every manager has to face many decision-making problems every day. The analysis, judgment and choice of each decision-making problem determine the quality and consequences of the decision. In short, it affects the performance of an enterprise for three to five years, and in the long run it affects the development of decades, even life and death. Therefore, MBA education should pay full attention to the cultivation of students' decision-making ability, and comprehensively and systematically integrate it into the cultivation of decision-making ability in teaching purposes, teaching methods and teaching effects.

First, make clear the goal of decision-making ability in the teaching purpose link

The teaching purposes of most MBA programs are written according to the curriculum, and most of them are aimed at the course content, and few are aimed at the application functions at work. Decision-making ability is the main component of managers' core competence oriented to work application, which should be reflected in the description of teaching purpose.

Decision-making ability can be divided into seven dimensions: resisting framework, agreeing with social norms, lack of self-confidence/overconfidence, applying decision-making rules, consistency of risk cognition, resisting sunk cost and path independence.

Anti-structural ability is mainly to cultivate students to avoid fixed thinking when analyzing problems and improve the flexibility and adaptability of analyzing problems. Decision-making problems encountered in enterprise management usually have diversified attributes and fluctuate with time. Structured thinking simplifies complex problems on the surface, but it is easy to enter rigid thinking, leading to extensive decision-making and difficult to meet diversified market demand, so it is an important training goal.

The ability to identify social norms is mainly to cultivate students' social ethical values and improve the social welfare of decision-making. Although the decision-making of enterprise management is mainly around the operation of products and services, every decision of the enterprise will affect the public to a greater or lesser extent, so the strength of social ethical value consciousness has a great influence on the quality of decision-making. Any decision that harms the public interest will not only damage the brand image of the enterprise, but also pay a huge economic price. Therefore, the ability to recognize social norms is an important training goal.

Self-confidence ability is mainly to cultivate students' objective evaluation of self-confidence and avoid overconfidence or lack of self-confidence. Overconfident management decision makers will often make radical and unrealistic decisions, which will lead to excessive expansion and crisis of enterprises, while unconfident management decision makers will often make conservative and backward decisions, which will lead enterprises to miss opportunities and lag behind others. The cultivation of self-confidence ability guides students to look at their own ability range objectively and maintain an appropriate level of self-confidence, so as to make reasonable decisions in their work. Therefore, self-confidence ability is an important training goal.

The ability to use decision-making rules is mainly to cultivate students' awareness of decision-making rules, avoid emotional decision-making and establish a rational decision-making thinking mode. Decision rules can guide managers to make rational decisions, but they are ignored. Managers who rely on empirical decision-making are prone to make blind decisions or often change decisions, which makes enterprise management fall into blind misunderstanding. Regular thinking is the basis of rational thinking, so decision-making ability is an important training goal.

The stability of risk perception is mainly to cultivate students' ability to objectively evaluate the probability of future events, that is, the possibility of risk occurrence. Facing the ever-changing market dynamics, managers' perception of future possibilities has a great influence on the consistency of decision-making. Managers with strong risk perception and stability can maintain the stability and consistency of business strategy, while managers with weak stability will make decisions that make the development of enterprises ups and downs. Therefore, the stability of risk perception is an important training goal.

The ability to resist sunk cost is mainly to cultivate students to avoid the influence of sunk cost on decision-making, so that they can focus on the balance of future costs and benefits and make rational decisions. Sunk cost is easy for managers to think too much about historical cost when making decisions in the future, especially the cost loss caused by past decision mistakes. This kind of influence can easily lead to the wrong decision before the new decision continues, so that the sunk cost will accumulate and eventually lead to the failure of the enterprise. Therefore, the ability to resist sinking cost is an important training goal.

Path independence ability is mainly to cultivate students' ability of independent analysis and judgment and avoid the interference of decision-making problems. In enterprise management, problems of the same nature may be expressed in different ways, and it is very important for managers to identify the essence of the problems behind the differentiated expression. The ability of expression recognition determines whether managers can make accurate judgments quickly, so the ability of path independence is an important training goal.

MBA courses can be roughly divided into marketing, production and operation, finance, human resources and information management. Each kind of course runs through the above seven dimensions of decision-making ability, but each kind of course has different forms and emphases in the seven dimensions of decision-making ability. Marketing curriculum focuses on cultivating anti-structural ability and social norm cognitive ability; Production and operation courses focus on cultivating the ability to use decision rules and path independence; The focus of financial courses is to train the stability of risk perception and the ability to resist sunk costs; The focus of human resources course is to cultivate cognitive ability and self-confidence in social norms; The information management course focuses on training anti-structural ability and applying decision rules.

If the teaching purpose of MBA course includes decision-making ability, then the description of the corresponding decision-making ability level should be added after the content description of teaching purpose. In describing the level of decision-making ability, we should first describe which dimensions the course focuses on, then describe the teaching content carriers or expressions of key dimensions, and finally describe the level to which the goal of the course is to improve students' decision-making ability.

Only when the description of decision-making ability is included in the description of teaching purpose can teachers make it clear that the teaching goal is not only the imparting of knowledge, but also the improvement of students' ability. At the same time, it also clearly conveyed to students that the goal of learning is not only the exam results, but the improvement of practical work ability.

Second, clarify the teaching methods of cultivating decision-making ability.

The traditional MBA syllabus focuses on the description of course content, and the provisions on teaching methods are relatively simple, while most teachers' teaching methods follow the traditional classroom teaching methods. Although this method is helpful for students to understand the course content, it is very lacking in knowledge application, which easily leads to poor learning effect.

Appropriate teaching methods are very important for MBA students to cultivate their decision-making ability. According to the classification standard of teaching methods recognized by UNESCO, teaching methods are divided into eight categories: classroom teaching, case study, seminar, role-playing, simulation training, self-study, film and video. For the cultivation of decision-making ability, priority should be given to role-playing, simulation training, seminars and case studies.

The best training methods to cultivate anti-structural ability are simulation training and case study, because this can let students see the advantages of unstructured decision-making and experience the flexibility of defining decision-making problems; The best training methods to cultivate the cognitive ability of social norms are role-playing and seminars, because this can make students understand the binding force of social rules on decision-making consequences and the negative impact of non-compliance with social rules on decision-making quality; The best training methods to cultivate self-confidence ability are simulation training and role-playing, because it can make students feel that their self-confidence level is too high or insufficient, so as to adjust their self-confidence level to a more objective state; The best training methods to cultivate the ability to use decision-making rules are simulation training and seminars, because simulation training can provide students with opportunities to use decision-making rules, and then discuss the simulation process through seminars to judge whether students have used consistent decision-making rules from beginning to end, thus improving their understanding of the importance of decision-making rules; The best way to cultivate the stability of risk perception is role-playing and case analysis, because role-playing can let students feel the judgment of risk personally and check the stability of their own judgment afterwards, while case analysis can observe and analyze the influence of the stability of risk perception of decision makers on the quality of decision-making from the perspective of outsiders; The best way to cultivate the ability to resist sunk cost is simulation training and seminar, because simulation training can make students feel the psychological impact of sunk cost on decision makers, and seminar can give students an opportunity to discuss and review their feelings during simulation training, which is helpful to avoid the impact of sunk cost in their work; The best way to cultivate path independence is role-playing and case analysis, because role-playing can make students feel the psychological state influenced by other decision makers in the decision-making process, while case analysis can make students see the importance of path independence to the decision-making effect from an outsider's point of view.

Matching teaching methods play an important role in cultivating MBA students' decision-making ability in all aspects. Only by organically combining reasonable teaching methods with the teaching contents of various courses can we produce good teaching results. The interspersed use of various teaching methods is a new challenge for teachers who are used to classroom teaching, and it will also have a great impact on the organization of classroom teaching. The teaching form will be diversified, diversified and multi-centered.

Thirdly, the measurement of decision-making ability in the teaching effect link is clear.

At present, the examination method of MBA courses is mainly open-book or closed-book examination, and the examination content focuses on the content of teaching materials, and rarely involves the knowledge application ability similar to decision-making ability. This assessment method guides students to pay attention to the memory and understanding of knowledge, but it is easy to ignore the application of knowledge, and it is difficult to apply what they have learned to practical work and improve their work performance.

The measurement of decision-making ability is of great value to both MBA students and teachers. Through the measurement of decision-making ability, students can know the level and improvement of their decision-making ability in a certain aspect of enterprise management, and teaching teachers can know to what extent classroom teaching has promoted the improvement of each student's decision-making ability and continuously improve teaching methods.

In principle, students' decision-making ability should be measured for the first time at the beginning of MBA course, and it should be used as a reference starting point. The second measurement is carried out in the middle of the course, so that students can understand the progress of improving their decision-making ability and make clear the next study focus. At the same time, teachers can understand the teaching effect of decision-making ability, adjust teaching methods and make clear the next teaching focus.

There are three methods to measure the decision-making ability of MBA students, which can be used in parallel. The first measurement tool is the international survey questionnaire, which is highly universal, widely applicable and systematic. The second measurement tool is that MBA teachers develop measurement questions suitable for this course according to the content of teaching materials, which are highly targeted and closely combined with the course to guide students to apply them in reality; The third measurement tool is that MBA teachers design questionnaires for students' superiors and colleagues according to the course content to measure students' decision-making ability. This method has strong application orientation, the evaluation subject is closely related to the work, and the evaluation of decision-making ability is the most direct. The above three testing tools are at three levels: basic decision-making ability, professional decision-making ability and application decision-making ability, so the combination of them can fully reflect the decision-making ability level of MBA students, and the measurement effect is the best.

The internationally accepted questionnaire has a set of test questions in each of the above seven decision-making abilities, and each set of test questions consists of several multiple-choice questions. The test method of anti-structural ability is to divide each decision-making question into positive and negative structural expressions, and ask the respondents to judge the choice or decision in each case separately. The scoring method is to subtract the scores corresponding to the choices made under the two expressions, which is the score of the question; The test method of social norm recognition ability is to give a series of social rules and the proportion of occurrence, and ask the respondents to estimate the proportion of occurrence. The scoring method is based on the ranking correlation between the actual occurrence ratio and the expected occurrence ratio. The test method of self-confidence ability is to give a series of questions that answer "no", and after each question, ask the respondents the confidence percentage determined. The scoring method is 1 minus the absolute value and average confidence percentage of each question. The way to test the ability to use decision rules is to give a series of decision scenarios and decision rules, and ask the respondents to follow the rules to make decisions. The scoring method is the percentage of correct answers. The test method of risk perception stability is to give a series of questions about the probability of future events, asking the respondents to give their own probability estimates, and the scoring method is the percentage of the same estimate in the overall estimate; The test method of anti-sinking cost ability is to give a series of decision-making questions facing sinking cost, and ask the respondents to make their own judgments. The scoring method is to measure the anti-silence cost ability by summarizing the scores of each question. The way to test the path independence ability is to give a series of coin guessing games. Each game is given two versions, one is single-stage decision and the other is multi-stage decision. The actual probability of the two versions is the same. Respondents are required to select a version, and the scoring method is the percentage of consistent selection in the overall selection.

To develop the course decision-making ability test questions based on the content of teaching materials, we should first analyze the specific dimensions of each part of the course content corresponding to the decision-making ability, and then design several decision-making scenarios and corresponding basic options according to the basic logic of the decision-making ability dimension of the course content. Finally, we can test it again and again before the teaching of this part of the course, so that students can see the improvement of their decision-making ability.

Based on the principle of subjective experience, the questionnaire on decision-making ability of students' superiors and colleagues adopts semi-open questions, and the answers can be interpreted with the help of teachers. The questionnaire structure can be divided into the following parts: the first part requires students' superiors or colleagues to recall the decision-making matters involved in their recent work; The second part requires them to evaluate students' decision-making level in these decision-making matters; The third part asks them to put forward suggestions to improve students' decision-making ability. MBA students distribute and recycle these questionnaires themselves. After recycling, they can ask teachers to help them interpret the contents of the questionnaire according to the theoretical dimension of decision-making ability and find the breakthrough point to improve their decision-making ability.

To sum up, decision-making ability, as one of the core competencies of MBA education, has a long-term impact on students' work development and should be highly valued in MBA teaching. The cultivation of decision-making ability is a systematic project. Teaching goal, teaching method and teaching effect run through the dimension of decision-making ability. Only when the goal is clear, the method is correct and the effect is clear can the system effect of mutual support be produced.

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