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18/12/2018 10:40:50 AM

Group Decision Making and How to Promote Group Decision Making

Many important organizational decisions are made by groups or teams of managers rather than individuals. Group decision making is superior to individual decision making in several respects. Firstly, group decision making make manager’s choices of alternative are less likely to fall victim to the biases and errors. They are able to draw on the combined skills, competencies and accumulated knowledge of group members and thereby improve their ability to generate feasible alternative and make good decisions. Group decision making also allows managers to process more information and to correct one another’s errors. And in the implementation phase, all managers affected by the decisions agree to cooperate, the probability that decision will be implemented successfully increases. Beside, there are some potential disadvantages associated with group decision making. It often takes much longer than individuals to make decisions. It might be difficult to satisfy all manager’s interests and preferences in one solution. In addition, group decision making can be undermined by biases. A major source of group bias is groupthink. Groupthink is a pattern of faulty and biased decision making that occurs in groups whose members strive for agreement among themselves at the expense of accurately assessing information relevant to a decision. When managers are subject to groupthink, they collectively embark on a course of action without developing appropriate criteria to evaluate alternative. Group members become blindly committed to the course of action that manager supports without evaluating its merits. Commitment is often based on an emotional, rather than an objective, assessment of the optimal course of action.

Managers are subject to groupthink usually collectively embarking on a course of action without developing appropriate criteria to evaluate alternatives. A group rallies around one central manager so that they become blindly committed to the decision without evaluating its merits. Commitment is often based on an emotional, rather than an objective, assessment of the optimal course of action. When groupthink occurs, pressures of agreement and harmony within a group have the unintended effect of discouraging individuals from raising issues that run counter to majority opinion. For example, the decisions made by President Johnson and his advisers from 1964 to 1967 to escalate the war in Vietnam, the decision made by NASA and Morton Thiokol to launch the ill- fated Challenger shuttle all were likely influenced by groupthink.

In order to improve the quality of group and individual decision making, managers make the decision that are realistic and are based on a thorough evaluation of alternatives. One technique known to counteract groupthink is devil’s advocacy. Devil’s advocacy is a critical analysis of a preferred alternative to ascertain its strength and weakness before it is implemented. The purpose of devil’s advocacy is to identify all the  reasons that might make the preferred alternative unacceptable after all. In this way, decision makers can be made aware of the possible perils of recommended courses of action. In addition, devil’s advocacy help counter the effects of groupthink and be a fairly easy method to implement because it does not involve excessive amounts of managers’ time and effort. To encourage creativity at the group level, organizations can make use of below group problem- solving techniques that promote creative ideas and innovative solutions; and prevent groupthink and uncover biases.

Brainstorming is very useful in some problem solving technique in which managers meet face- to-face  to  generate  and  debate  a  wide  of  alternative  from  which  to  make  a  decision. Brainstorming is very useful in situation such as finding a new name for some kinds of product. The main reason for the loss of productivity in brainstorming appears to be production blocking which occurs because group members cannot always simultaneously make sense of all the alternatives being generated, think up additional alternatives, and remember what they were thinking.

Nominal group technique is the way to avoid production blocking. It provides a more structured way of generating alternatives in writing and gives each manager more time and opportunity to come up with potential solutions. The nominal group technique is especially useful when an issue is controversial and when different managers might be expected to champion different courses of action.

Delphi technique is the technique used when managers in different cities or countries. This is a written approach to creative problem solving.

Nguyen Thi My My