Any human activity calls for making decisions, which can be defined as a commitment to a course of action. The result of making decisions is the selection of an alternative over others. The process involves discovery, acquisition and combination of relevant information.
People have different styles of decision making that are reflected in how they identify problems or opportunities and make choices. This will directly affect the quality of the decision and its promptness.
The following discussion will cover the benefits and downfalls of fully reflected decisions against quick and reflexive actions in decision making.
In understanding the drivers behind decision making, it must be born in mind the capabilities of the human being are restricted by its perception of the environment and by its cognitive limitations.
[...] The result is a limitation of the scope and variables in the decision process; all consequences are inevitably not considered. - In the decision making process, people anticipate the consequences of their actions, but they do not assess to what degree these consequences connect to their values. People's values evolve and change over their life. Decision makers tend to over value their favoured alternative by denying value tradeoffs. Overconfidence in forecast of outcome can lead to poor results (Schwenk 1984). [...]
[...] Goodwin, P 2009, ‘Common sense and hard decision analysis: why might they conflict?', Management decision, vol no pp. 427-440. Hartmann, LC & Patrickson, M 1998, ‘Individual decision making: implications for decision training in TQM', International Journal of Quality & reliability Management, vol no pp. 619-633. Newell, BR, Lagnado, DA & Shanks, DR 2007, Straight choices: the psychology of decision making, Psychology Press, Hove, UK. Nutt, PC 2008, ‘Investigating the success of decision making processes', Journal of Management Studies, vol no pp. 425-455. Schwarber, PD 2005, ‘Leaders and the decision [...]
[...] Its greed to reward shareholders and rivalry with Qantas engaged them in this loss making venture in Australia. In 2000, Air NZ was losing $ 1.3 million a day and the New Zealand government had to bail out the national carrier. The fiasco resulted in the layoff of hundreds of workers; and senior management walked away. Escalation of commitment and illusion of control are other topics that could also be debated as limitations to the rational model. I hold the view that decision makers are successful when they have a sound understanding of their environment and when their decision strategy is adapted to the task. [...]
[...] It must be kept in mind that good intuitive decision making only comes when it is based on a solid foundation of hard fact gathering and a balanced emotional assessment of all the options (Zhao 2009). One must never make a decision based on intuition solely. Again, self checking and feedback are necessary for sound intuitive decisions. The academic research I carried out comforted my thoughts that contemplation and decisiveness are complementary qualities in decision making. In reality, successful and confident decision makers blend logic, emotions and intuition. [...]
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