Decision Making

Lorraine Sherry

Full citation: Lunenberg, F.C., & Ornstein, A.C. (1991). Educational Administration Concepts and Practices, pp. 151-175. Belmont CA: Wadsworth Publishing Co.

Models of decision making

All models of decision making consider it to be a rational concept. E.g., Herb Simon's model:

Intelligence activity: search the environment for conditions calling for decision making
Design activity: invent, develop, and analyze various courses of action from which to choose
Choice activity: select a particular course of action from options available.

Henry Mintzberg's model:

Identification phase: recognize a problem or opportunity and make a diagnosis
Development phase: search for existing standard procedures or design a new tailor-made solution (involves trial & error)
Selection phase: choose a solution either by judgment of the decision maker, by logical analysis of the choices, or by bargaining when the selection involves a group of stakeholders.

Classical model

Decisionmaking is a rational process that seeks to maximize the chances of achieving the desired outcome by considering all possible alternatives, exploring all consequences thereof, and then making a decision. It assumes that the decisionmaker has perfect information, knows all alternatives and their possible consequences, and possesses a criterion for making the decision that involves maximizing the desired objective. There are 6 steps in the process:

Identifying the problem (recognize it, determine optimum level of performance, divide into subproblems, specify the problem in terms of the gap between actual and optimal - cf. Rossett)
Generating alternatives (consider them all, no matter how ridiculous - brainstorm)
Evaluating alternatives (consider all possible intended and unintended outcomes, assess them, then assess the likelihood of each outcome - positive and negative - to each alternative)
Choosing an alternative (rank your alternatives and select the best one - hopefully one with a high probability of positively valued outcomes and a low probability of negatively valued ones)
Implementing the decision (sell it to those affected by it)
Evaluating the decision (measure actual performance against performance objectives).

Behavioral Model

Rationality is bounded. Your information is incomplete, you can't generate all possible solutions, you can't accurately predict all consequences, and it's impossible to determine exactly which alternative is optimal. Here are your options:

Satisficing: choose the first alternative that satisfies minimal standards of acceptability
Contextual rationality: choose the best decision mediated by polilcies, conflict-resolution requirements, distribution of power and authority, and the limits of human rationality
Procedural rationality: focus on the procedures used to make the decision, such as operations research, systems analysis, strategic planning, etc., and use whatever information they furnish
Retrospective rationality: devote your energy in justirying the rationality of decisions you have already made
Incrementalizing: make small changes incrementally in the existing situation and "muddle through"
Garbage Can Model: members of your team collect solutions; they mix problems, solutions, and decision participants and come up with some patterns of interaction that the rational model won't predict.

Vroom-Yetton Normative Model

This identifies five decision making styles, identifies criteria for choosing among them, and describes attributes of the problems that determine which levels of suboordinate participation are feasible. Finally, it offers rules for making the final choice.

Decision feasibility: quality, acceptance, and timeliness
Decision quality: is it effective?
Decision acceptance: are they accepted by your subordinates?
Timeliness: if short-time, be autocratic; if lots of time, be participative.

There are five decision making styles:

AI: autocratic (make the decision yourself)
AII: get information from subordinates, then make the decision yourself
CI: consultative (share the problem individually with subordinates, then make the decision yourself)
CII: share the problem as a group with your subordinates and make the decision yourself
GII share the problem and reach a consensus decision.

If there's not enough information and you require good decision quality, eliminate AI.
If decision quality is important and subordinates won't buy in, then eliminate GII.
For unstructured problems, choose CII or GII.
If acceptance by subordinates is crucial, eliminate AI and AII.
If acceptance is crucial and there's a lot of disagreement, eliminate the first three.
If negotiation is critical to determine what is fair and equitable, choose only GII.
If acceptance is critical and the subordinates want equal partnership in the decisionmaking process, choose only GII.

Benefits of shared decisionmaking

Since group decisionmaking is the product of interpersonal decisionmaking processes and group dynamics, an administrator must lead the group from a collection of individuals to a collaborative decisionmaking unit. Research is ambiguous between the relative effectiveness of individual vs. participative decisionmaking. The benefits of shared decisionmaking over individual decisionmaking are:

Decision quality is better because there's more information available
Groups provide a greater number of approaches to a problem
Participation in the decisionmaking process promotes buy-in
Group participation increases understanding of the decision
Groups are more effective at evaluating alternatives because of the increased knowledge and viewpoints available
Major errors tend to be avoided.

Problems in shared decisionmaking

One big one is groupthink. It has 8 symptoms:

Illusion of invulnerability
Rationalization based on past decisions
A belief in the inherent morality of the group
Stereotyping of oppositino leaders
Direct pressure against dissenting voices
Self-censorship of any deviations from consensus
Shared illusion of unanimity (assuming silence means consent)
Appointing mindguards that might shatter their shared complacency

Groupthink occurs primarily when

the group is cohesive
the group is insulated from qualified outsiders
the leader promotes her own favored suggestion.

Nine suggestions to avoid groupthink:

assign the roles of critical evaluators to all members
leaders should be impartial at the outset
set up several independent groups to look at the same problem
divide into independent groups when feasibility and effectiveness of alternatives are being examined
periodically discuss the group's deliberations with trusted outsiders
invite qualified outside experts to each meeting
assign the role of devil's advocate to at least one member
survey warning signals from rivals and construct alternative scenarios
call on all members to express their doubts before making a final choice

Risky Shift

Stoner's research shows that group decisions are consistently riskier than individual decisions because responsibility is shared, group leaders are greater risk takers than individuals, gorup discussion leads to a more thorough examination of the pros and cons of the outcomes, and riskk taking is socially desirable in our culture.

Escalation of commitment

There is a tendency of groups to escalate commitment to a course of action in order to justify their original decision.

Shared decision-making techniques

Brainstorming: generate a wide variety of new ideas. Do not evaluate them or discuss alternatives, do not consider any idea outlandish, welcome large quantities of ideas, try to combine similar ideas.
Nominal group: generate and evaluate ideas: post them on a flip chart and allow members to evaluate them silently, elicit one new idea from each member, discuss each idea on the flip chart in order, preliminary vote on importance of each item, analyze and discuss voting patterns, and then take a final vote and close the decision process. (This is what we do at RMC.)
Delphi technique: identify a panel of experts, send the problem to each one individually, each one solves the problem, a central location compiles all these comments, each panelist receives a copy of the whole thing, each expert provides feedback on all the other comments, and the last 2 steps are repeated until consensus is reached.
Devil's advocacy: after a planning group has developed alternative solutions to a problem, the plan is given to one or more staff members with instructions to find fault with it.
Dialectical inquiry: form two or more homogeneous but totally divergent gorups to present the full range of views on the problem, have each group meet independently to identify its own assumptions and rate them, have them debate the other groups and defend their position, analyze information from all groups, and then attempt to achieve consensus among all groups. Needless to say, a full consensus does not always follow, though this is a good way to get rid of groupthink.

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Lorraine Sherry
lsherry@carbon.cudenver.edu
Created October 22, 1996