ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the context of decision-making in hospitality and the fundamental task of managers and mental tasks that flow from that. It suggests that the act of judgement links information, knowledge, communication and action and argues that the standard rational model of decision-making needs to be carefully interpreted. The chapter also explores that handling uncertainty is a distinguishing feature of individual performance. Management in hospitality lives in a world dominated by two primary sources of uncertainty – variable consumer demand and the subjective evaluation, by the consumers, of the products and services they provide. The culinary expression a la carte has resonance with the modern production management technique of 'just in time management', where products are not made until they are sold. Management's solution to this problem is to take some unknown variables and one know variable and model them into an equation which uses historical data and forms the basis of a 'rolling forecast'.
