Understanding Decision Making of Individual and Group

Definition of Decision making

The thought process of selecting a logical choice from the available options. When trying to make a good decision, a person must weigh the positives and negatives of each option, and consider all the alternatives. For effective decision making, a person must be able to forecast the outcome of each option as well, and based on all these items, determine which option is the best for that particular situation.

Individual Decision Making

Good decision making is a skill to be learned and mastered, especially for leaders who are managing a team. More importantly, individuals must also practice being good decision makers since it is not advisable to be too dependent on others for personal decisions. The downside of being too dependent on others is that you might have a hard time standing on your own two feet when a situation would require you to make a choice without anyone’s help. A better way to deal with it is to consult friends or trusted people who can advise you on the kind of decision you are about to make. They can give you tips, suggestions and warnings before you implement it. This way, you are still on your own in arriving at a final decision.

Pros and Cons of Individual Decision Making 

When you make a decision on your own, you take pride in it especially if the choice made was successful and effective. Yet, there are moments when it is just difficult not to seek assistance from others. Find out the pros and cons of being an independent decision maker.

Advantages of Individual Decision Making

1. You can take immediate action and fast solution to a problem or a situation.
2. You are solely responsible for the kind of decision achieved, whether it is good or bad.
3. You take full accountability for the outcome of the decision and its consequences.
4. You take no arguments with your personal opinions on how to address a problem.
5. You become efficient with the use of time and effort in reaching a decision.
6. There is no need to delegate roles and responsibilities so you do not have to deal with people who are hesitant to take on a responsibility.
7. You are free from too much diversity in a group which tends to limit cohesiveness and affect the decision making.

Disadvantages of Individual Decision Making

1. You only see things based on your own perception.
2. You have no one to discuss regarding the projected outcome of the decision. There may be other people who have already gone through the kind of situation that you are experiencing and they might be able to share whether they were successful or not in the kind of decision they made.
3. You may have a hard time reaching a decision especially when you have an indecisive character.
4. It can be difficult for you to tell whether you are experiencing a decision-making pitfall or not.
5. The level of motivation there is in individual decision making is not as strong as when a team is successful enough to create a motivational effect to the members.
6. There may not be so many creative solutions generated when only one person makes the decision.

Why Group Decision-making?

1. Integration of the team (Specialization vs. Integration) - As we will examine when we study organizational structure, the needs to specialized and group individuals in department by functional expertise posses some coordination, or integration, problems. One method of providing integration is the establishment of project teams.
2. Better decisions - It can be argued that group produce potentially superior decisions by affecting one of the three elements of decisions:
• Criteria - As group membership increases there is a likelihood that more stakeholders will be represented and their interests can be incorporated into the criteria used in the decision process.
• Cause/Effect - By including individuals with specialized expertise, we tend to increase the likelihood that more accurate cause/effect assumptions (theory) will be used in the decision-making process.
• Alternatives - Groups tend to develop a greater number of potential options and more creative options.
3. Commitment to decision - This applies especially to individuals responsible for implementing the decision that requires a change of behavior. Individuals contributing to a decision tend to feel greater ownership to the decision, especially when their identities are tied to it. Resistance to change and motivation to ensure that the decision is implemented properly can be increased through participation.

What is the role of the formal leader in managing a group problem solving process?

The first issue for the leader is to define his/her style. This may range from completely autocratic to full participation. (If the leader opts for some form of group problem solving (CI … GII), it is important that one individual be assigned as the process leader, or facilitator. This individual has the responsibility of guiding the group through the problem-solving process. Here are some guidelines

1. The leader should decide if he or she desires to take an advocacy role for a particular solution. If so, he or she should have someone else facilitate the problem-solving process.
2. The leader must decide if he or she has the skills to facilitate the process. If not, once again, someone else should take on this role.
3. Sometimes a process leader (facilitator) emerges as the process progresses. It is important for the leader to turn over the process reigns explicitly, (if it is his or her wish to do so), rather than leave group members confused as to who is in charge of the process.

What motivates individuals to adopt a Group goal?

1. Goal identification - The individual has internalized the group goal as his or her own.
2. Instrumental motivation - The individual sees some extrinsic personal gain when the group is successful (Group goal-based bonus, gain sharing plan, etc.)
3. Self-concept external
• The individual social identity is tied to the group and when the group is viewed as success, the individual believes that he or she is viewed as successful by his or her reference group
• The individual believes that members of his or her reference group will attribute group success to his or her competencies.
4. Self-concept internal - The individual sees group success as a reinforcement or validation of his or her internally held self-perception of competencies. Therefore, when the group is successful, this success is validation of the individual competencies. This requires that the individual perceives that role that he or she performs has significant impact on group success. (This is the fundamental logic behind job enrichment and participative management.)

Group Decision Making Process 

At the outset of the meeting or process the leadership lay out the process being used so that members have an idea of where they are headed.

1. Problem Identification
• Define problem in situation or behavioral terms.
• Problem definition should be free to reference to causes and or fault
• Be careful not to invoke defensiveness on the part of group members.
• Problem definition should invoke mutual interests.
• Problem definition should culminate in a clear primary objective
• A set of criteria or constraints that a successful solution should meet should be developed. This constraint set should be based on claimant or stakeholder interests.
• Issues:
• Group members often want to advance a particular solution or plan. This must be avoided. The more public an individual's "position" becomes, the more committed he or she becomes to it.
• When a group member's identity is linked to a particular project, task or function, the form the problem statement takes will affect his or her degree of defensiveness.
• The group should focus on goals, behaviors, and outcomes rather than people and personality.
2. Problem Diagnosis - Develop a model of the problem using the behavior or objective as the dependent variable. The independent variables in the model should represent the potential causes of the problem. Avoid the trap of assessing the blame.
• Issues:
• Developing a model or construct is an "intuitive" exercise. Once the model is established, it tends to become the basis the remainder of the process. Be sure there is consensus on the model
3. Solution Generation - Generate a number of possible solutions before starting evaluation.
• Issues:
• Don't get locked into a limited solution set too early
• Work to encourage new and different approaches. Consensual schema often limits the range of alternatives groups consider.
4. Solution Evaluation and Choice - Evaluation should be based on comparing alternative solutions to constraint set developed in the problem identification phase Develop strategy for dealing with multiple conflicting criteria: Maximizing versus satisfying
• Issues:
• The method used to resolve intra-group conflicts is important at this point. The use of forcing (voting), smoothing, withdrawal, compromise, and integrative decision making (win-win) method have different consequence in terms of solution quality, solution acceptance, and group maintenance.
5. Problem Identification - Development of a plan to implement the change including reducing the expected resistance to the change
6. Evaluation - Develop strategy to evaluate effectiveness of chosen solution in solving stated problem without creating new problems (Pareto optimality).

Methods or styles of Group Decision-Making

Methods or styles of Group Decision-Making

Advantages of Groups Decision Making

Individual and group decisions each have their own strengths and weaknesses. Some of the advantages that group decisions have over individual decisions are described as follows:

1. Since group members have different specialties, they tend to provide more information and knowledge. Also, the information tends to be more comprehensive in nature and the groups can generate a greater number of alternatives. There is often truth to the axiom that “two heads are better than one.”
2. Implementation of the decision is more effective since the people who are going to implement the decision, either participated in the group themselves or had their representatives in it. This also increases the commitment of the people to see the implementation to success.
3. It is important that the decision be accepted by all, because even a low quality decision that has acceptance can be more effective than a higher quality decision that lacks general acceptance.
4. The input from a larger number of people eliminates the biases that are generally introduced due to individual decision making. It also reduces the unreliability of individual decisions.
5. The participative style of decision making process builds up foundations as a training ground for subordinates who develop the skills of objective analysis of information and deriving of conclusions.
6. The group decision making is more democratic in nature, while individual decision making is perceived to be more autocratic in nature. The democratic processes are more easily acceptable and are consistent with the democratic ideals of our society.

Disadvantages of Group Decision Making 

There are certain drawbacks in group decision making also. The group processes can negatively affect performance in a variety of ways.

1. The process is highly time consuming in terms of assembling the right group and usually a group takes more time in reaching a consensus since there are too many opinions to be taken into consideration. The time problem increases with the group size. Accordingly, the urgency of arriving at a decision must be considered when group decision making style is selected.
2. Many times, the participants in group decision making have their own axes to grind or their own interests to protect. These self- centered interests lead to personality conflicts that may create interpersonal obstacles which may diminish the efficiency of the process as well as the quality of the decision.
3. Some members may simply agree with the others for the sake of agreement since there are social pressures to conform and not to be the odd-man out. Thus, the desire to be a good group member tends to silence disagreement and favors consensus. The social pressures can be very strong inducing people to change their attitudes, perceptions and behaviors.
4. The group members may exhibit “focus effect. This means that the group may focus on one or few suggested alternatives and spend all the time in evaluating these and may never come up with other ideas, thus limiting the choices.
5. The decisions made by the group may not always be in accord with the goals and objectives of the organizations. This is especially true when the goals of the group and those of individuals do not reinforce each other. This will result in decisions that may be detrimental to organizational benefits.
6. The groups may shift either towards more risk taking or towards less risk taking and either of the shifts may be undesirable. Generally speaking, problems suitable for group decision making involve some degree of risk or uncertainty. But to take excessive risk is as bad as taking no risk at all.
7. Studies conducted by Stoner showed that groups tend to shift towards riskier decisions. This way, if the decision turns out to be a bad one, the responsibility for it will not be traceable to any particular individual in the group.