The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Decision Making

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2008

This article examines the effectiveness of methods that are designed to provide structure and support to decision making. Those that are primarily aimed at individual decision makers are examined first and then attention is turned to groups. In each case weaknesses of unaided decision making are identified and how successful the application of formal methods is likely to be in mitigating these weaknesses is assessed. decision making, decision process, effectiveness of methods, individual decision makers, evaluation of methods, formal methods

Advances in Human Resources Management and Organizational Development, 2014

The use of a collaborative decision-making model has been shown to produce more creative solutions and to increase the size of the stakeholder pool, as well as increase the commitment of stakeholders to final decisions. This study combines the research in group decision-making using the functional theory and the bona fide group perspective along with the large body of research on Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS). The purpose is to assist organizations in both making decisions and understanding the processes used and individuals involved in those decisions. This longitudinal study of one university’s collaboration process presents their multiple planning efforts in accreditation and creating civility. Two participant-observers discuss several bona fide decision making groups across a five-year period along with the application of a GDSS that uses Saaty’s Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to assist in that decision-making. The usefulness of GDSS is discussed and its future applica...

Indian Journal of Public Administration, 1995

Following a detailed review of the conflicting conceptions 9f decision-making and explaining what really happens during decision-making in organisations, the author suggests that organisational decisions should be seen as fundamentally determined by bargaining and compromises with respect to decision-makers ' configuration of power and control over the environment. Identifying what can be termed 'variant' approaches to the 'basic' decision-making approaches of Rational-Comprehensive, /ncrementa/ism and Mixed-Scanning, the author seeks to prove that most of the assumptions of basic decisional processes of the 'variant' approaches emanate from the fundamental premises of the 'basic ' approaches, arguing that the variants were found to share similar features, assumptions and characteristics associated with the three basic approaches. THERE IS no commonly recognised approach to actual decision-making in organisation. What has been observed in this regard is a complex maze of perspectives derived from different disciplines. In fact, there are conflicting conceptions of the nature of decision-making in organisations and processes associated with this in any one setting. Basically, this article seeks to explain what really happens during decision-making in organisations. This task is deemed necessary due to myriad of perspectives existing in this area of study, which, rather than clarify, have further complicated our understanding of this phenomenon. Again, this article aims to show, in the process of addressing the above, that the different variants to what can be termed as basic approaches to organisational decision-making,-do not, in fact, vary fundamentally from the basic approaches. Fundamentally, there are three distinct approaches to organisational decision-making. These are the rationalcomprehensive or root method, successive limited comparisons or branch method, otherwise known as 'muddling through' or 'incrementalism', and the 'mixed-scanning approach'. These may be regarded as the basic approaches. Apart from the classical economists, authors associated with 2 A. OSITA AGBU the root method include Dimock, 1 Allison 2 and Duncan. 3 Authors associated with incrementalism include Simon, 4 Hirschman, 5 Lindblom, 6 Braybrooke, 7 Cyertand March, 8 and Mintzberg et al, 9. Scholars associated with the mixed-scanninfi approach, regarded as a third approach to decision-making, include Etzioni, 1 Alexander, 11 Berry 12 and Lee. 13 The details involved in these approaches are not presented here as these are fairly well known. However, these details will become evident during the analysis. Variants to the root method include the classical economic model and the strategic management approach of Bruner, and Mintzberg; 14 Weschler and Backoff. 15 On incrementalism, two of the variants traceable to its basic tenets include the Carnegie model 16 and the model of 'structured' decision-making. 17 On mixed:"'scanning, the variants include the "Nonnative-Optimum Model" propounded earlier b~ Yehezkel Dror; 18 the Garbage Can Model; 19 Decisionmaking by Objection ° and the Bureaucratic-politics Model.

Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 2016

The decision-making process and the group are two multidisciplinary topics that have captured the interest of many researchers, but at the same time are accompanied by high complexity. The decision-making is considered a continuous and dynamic process that involves a choice, and is oriented to organizational goals. The organizational performance is determined by the decisions taken and their effective implementation. Increasingly, companies have to decide for different situations, never tackled in the past, and often the decisions are not revealed what was expected due to the increased complexity and uncertainty. In this context assumes importance the group decision-making. But the group decisions are really better than individual decisions? Studies on the efficacy of group decision-making lead to different conclusions. However, most of them believe that the group decides better. The main goal of this paper is to show that the comparison between the group and the individual to determine which one is better is a complex process and thus, instead of establishing this is more appropriate defining the criteria to take into analysis before determining whether group should be used or not. So, the first thing done in this paper is discussing about the benefits and limitations that accompany the use of groups with decision-making purpose. Afterwards, with reference to different distinguishing criteria we stop on the type of decisions. The aim is to emphasize that regardless of the many advantages of groups, some contextual factors as risk, uncertainty, complexity, the amount of information available, time limits and the characteristics of the decision as hierarchical level, degree of structuring, repeatability, type of decision-maker and time horizon, should be the main elements to keep in consideration for determining whether it is more appropriate the use of group to make decisions.

2019

In this paper we discuss the decision making process in an organization for effectiveness. In this process including six important steps useful for organization effectively done. In such complex and fast changing organization environment, manager and employees are faced with many problem and they have make decision. Decision making is an integral part of the management of any organization. (Pearce II & Robinson1989) indicate that decision making is inevitable because to explicitly avoid making a decision is in itself to make a decision. Managers are usually making many decision some of them strategic and other operational. Decision making is referred to as the heart of the management process (Mann 1976). Decisions are long, complex, highly unstructured and risky and have great impact on the future on organization. Decision making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. Using a step-by-step decision-mak...

International Journal of Management and Decision Making, 2020

The important process for any business organisation is decision-making, which need resources. The process of making decision is fundamental and vital for any business organisation. This paper includes various decision-making models and its techniques in details along with its suitability. The significance of this study is to choose the appropriate and correct model for business. The paper proposes that a particular decisionmaking model becomes a suitable tool for decision makers under fluctuating conditions and time stress. When the parameter of the environment changes, the model has to be chosen accordingly. We also discuss the phases of the decision-making which includes distinct techniques to support each stage of the decision-making process to interpret the business thoughts into a noticeable, transmissible structure. This paper includes the performance measurement that provides benchmarks about optimum performance by the system and it can help to make better decisions, meet the challenges, and achieve the missions under the specific decision-making frameworks.

This chapter includes a discussion of leadership decisions and stress. Many leaders are daily exposed to stress when they must make decisions, and there are often social reasons for this. Social standards suggest that a leader must be proactive and make decisions and not flee the situation. Conflict often creates stress in decision-making situations. It is important for leaders to understand that it is not stress in itself that leads to bad decisions, rather, bad decisions may be the result of time pressure in the sense that leaders have not been able to gather enough relevant information. Thus, it is worthwhile for leaders to be able to prioritize properly in order to cope with stressful situations. In some situations, a leader chooses to delegate the decisions to his/her team and then it is important to guard against «groupthink», a phenomenon where members of a team put consensus before anything else as a result of the peer pressure. A number of methods are presented that enable leaders to avoid this phenomenon. Often leaders are involved in decision-making situations where they are forced to navigate between objectives that are in strong conflict with each other. We are talking about «decision dilemmas». These are characterized by the existence of a conflict between the top leadership's desire to control the activities and their wish to give autonomy and independence to the various units. It is important for leaders to be able to strike a balance in different dilemma situations and understand how to best manage conflicts when they arise. Working with structured group processes The basic idea of structured group processes is that a panel of experts can make more realistic predictions than a group of laymen. It is common that these processes are referred to as the Delphi technique. The number of respondents is usually between 30 − 40 participants. However, it is suggested by Wright and Goodwin (2008) that 5−20 participants should be used. It is important that the participants are guaranteed anonymity. All participants receive comprehensive feedback from the whole group so that each member has the opportunity to adjust their own assessments. Often a special research group that plans exercises, tests questions, and analyzes the results is created. It is common that a group of experts initially responds to a well-designed questionnaire. Here, they give their views on when a number of events of strategic importance will appear in the future, if at all. After this first round is finished, the results are summarized for each event, in quartiles for the whole group. Then it

Open Journal of Applied Sciences, 2020

This research develops and elaborates studies done for a contribution to the 2019 PIC International Conference 2019 in Malta, about the decision-making process. Decision-making is the act of choosing between two or more courses of action. In the wider process of problem-solving, decision-making involves choosing between possible solutions to a problem, and these decisions can be made through either an intuitive or reasoned process, or a combination of the two. The study of decision-making processes, to be understood as the role of human factors, becomes particularly interesting in complex organizations. This research aims to analyze how an effective team, within organizations, can develop a more correct and effective decision-making, in order to get an optimal solution, overcoming the typical uncertainty. The paper describes the point of departure of decision in complex, time-pressured, uncertain, ambiguous and changing environments. The use of a leading case (the Tenerife air accident, 1977), will lead us to the desired results, i.e. to demonstrate how an effective decisional process, including team dynamics, can be useful to reduce the risk, present in all decisions, and reduce errors. The case of Tenerife air disaster, confirm our research. In that case, in fact, the group dynamics prove not to have worked. Thus, we can state that if a team approach had been followed instead of a more individual one, the results would probably have been different. The central belief of the research, is that classic decision theory could benefit from a team approach, which reduces the risk that a decision may lead to undesirable consequences. As demonstrated with the case study, within organizations, the decision-making is not a solitary action. Decisions, in fact, are made within a team and in order to be able to function effectively in a group, and manage group situations, there are essential skills. The team can then become a resource for the decisional process and problem solving, but it is necessary to understand the dynamics.