Organizational Behavior Assignment on Effective Decision-Making Styles

Question

Task: Write a detailed report on organizational behavior assignment on the topic “Using an example evaluates three decisions making styles that contributes to effective decisions”.

Answer

Introduction
Making choices among plenty of alternative actions or sometimes inaction, only which can bring success is called decision making. As stated by Stankevich, (2017) with regards to the present organizational behavior assignment, it is required to gather sufficient data and information to make a perfect decision that leads a person or team towards success. It is important for everyone regardless of leading a business organization, a team, a corporation or his own work, how to make a strategic decision that can bring sustainable success. In order to create more productive and cooperative work culture individual needs to know how he and his coworkers would run the job. Decision making is like a practice that needs to nurture to create great leadership quality (Freelon, 2018). Decision making styles can be classified into many such as directive decision making, analytical decision making, conceptual decision making and behavioral decision making, strategic decision making, tactical decision making, operational decision making, process. The following report will discuss three types of decision-making style that contributes to effective decisions.

Decision Making Styles
Directive Decision Making Style
Directive decision making is based on the known factors gained from previous experience of the decision maker. According to Azeska, StarcandKevereski, (2017), in directive decision making, the decision maker is too much pragmatic and has zero tolerance for ambiguity and he focuses on every positive and negative side of the decision that he is going to make. In this decision making process, there is only the rule of single ownership and therefore, there is no need of extra communication with other team mates or co-workers. Hence, directive decision making is a very quick and clear process, though sometimes it is made of impulsiveness and without required data or information. As there is almost no room for guessing and confusion, therefore there must be some advantages and some disadvantages in this decision making process.

Advantage of Directive Decision Making- The structure is very clear in this decision making process. Here, leaders only provide the decision structure and then instruct their co-workers or team mates how to follow the structure exactly in order to gain success at work. Another advantage of this style is its quickness. As stated by Abubakar, Elrehail,Alatailatand Elçi, (2019), when people need quick solution of an urgent problem directive decision making is the best way to solve this. Finally, consistency is the most important advantage of this style, as the decision maker literally researches on the pros and cons of the decision according to his previous experience and collected information, then he pursues on making the decision in order to ensure the success.

Disadvantage of Directive Decision Making-The directive decision making style lacks of adaptability as here, the decision maker or the leader is only one who decides what to do and there is no communication with others to take their suggestions. Thus, the lack of adaptability creates lack of creativity. The sense of autonomy of this style gravitates towards a higher level of ownership that is controlled by a single decision maker. This creates a lack of ownership which leads an organization towards a decreased productivity.

Example-If in a customer service company, customer faces any issues the manager would review the past interactions and company policies and according to this the manager instructs the team to deal with the scenario.

AnalyticalDecision Making Style
Decision makers in Analytical decision making style, first collect relevant data and information then carefully analyze the scenario to come up with a strategic decision. In this particular style a decision maker believes that strongest decision comes from concrete evidences and more such information means better decision.According to Hineetal., (2018), this decision making style is time consuming as it needs sufficient time to compile information and evidence before coming to a conclusion, therefor it is not applicable where it is urgent to get a quick solution.Being task oriented, analytical decision makers look after every detail and then make a possible solution that they believe is the best one. Hence, analytical decision makers have high tolerance of ambiguity.

Advantages of Analytical Decision Making Style- In this decision making style, there is enough time and rooms fore creative thinking. Individuals can nurture different creative and unique solution for same problem to get the best and easiest solution.As information is collected from plenty of sources, the possibility of decision making become more creative towards success.

Disadvantages of Analytical Decision Making Style-It is not possible to have a ton of information about every possible or sudden problems. Therefore, the pivotal issue with this analytical decision making style is sometimes there is a shortage of relevant data or information regarding the scenario. Another major issue with analytical decision making style is that it demands plenty of data and evidences from various sources which is enough time consuming procedure. Hence, this decision making style is not applicable if there is a need for quick decision for solving a sudden problem. This delayed action process sometimes causes frustration among the teams and thus the decision maker receives a bad reputation where he is being called “devil’s advocate” or “20 questions” by his co-workers or team mates (Kabassi, 2019). Another major issue of this decision making style is its lack of flexibility. Here, decision makers want to make best decision and they only believes on their experience, knowledge, collected data and evidences and therefore, they create inflexibility and it causes ignorance from listening from other’s perspective. Example-Often, marketing team needs to take strategic decision based on the feedbacks and reviews from their employees and customers. In such cases marketing manager or the decision maker ask their team mates or co-workers to submit relevant reports collected as the feedbacks from various customers of different demographic region and then the manger research those reports to make a perfect decision on how to perform their advertisement and marketing.

Behavioral Decision Making Style
Other than the two previously discussed decision making style, Behavioral decision making style is completely different in nature as it prioritize other’s opinion and emotion for making a suitable decision. Behavioral decision making style emphasizes on human relationships and their emotions more than the task and evaluates these feelings as the potential part of decision making process.As the behavioral decision maker believes on the decision that benefits everyone, therefore while making choices from various sources and suggestions, the decision maker values other’s suggestion and simultaneously considers other people’s requirements and emotions (Cosenza, CiccarelliandNigro, 2019).Hence, in this process before settling on a final choice, the leader or decision maker asks for the valuable suggestions and advice from others which creates a positive energy among the team.Behavioral decision making style is also referred as Team Decision Making or Flexible Decision Making style.

Advantages of Behavioral Decision Making Style- The most impressive advantage of this decision making process is its healthy team environment, where everyone keeps working togetherhappily.According to Lin, Featherman, BrooksandHajli, (2019), this decision making style creates less disagreement and conflict thus the harmony in an organization remain intact. For being flexible decision making style, here the leader can change his own decision according to the scenario and can adopt more agreeable and popular solution coming from the other team workers. Many leaders and managers had good reputation and great success through behavioral decision making style.

Disadvantages of Behavioral Decision Making Style- The major issue with this decision making process is that such decisions can never be unique and creative in its own way. As stated by Parker, Bruine de Bruin, Fischhoffand Weller, (2018), in this style, leaders are so focused on maintaining harmony in the organization and among the workers that overshadows the creative and innovative opportunities that bring sustainable competitive success towards the organization. Thus, the next issue of disapproval and conflict comes through the first issue which creates dissension and dissatisfaction among the other leaders, team mates and co-workers after the completion of the job with the taken decision.

Example- For installing new software in a sales team, manager first provides the team mates various options of software regarding sales on a trial basis and then asks them to submit their feedbacks, experience and drawbacks of using this software. After discussing every details of the software with the team the manager finally choose one to move forward with and ask the team’s opinion about this.

Conclusion
Decision making is basically a selection and elimination procedure where the decision maker needs to weigh all the alternatives and choose one accordingly that would potentially benefit the team or organization. It is inevitable for the managers and leaders to make decisions strategically on every single day based on the various factors such as their previous experience, knowledge, collected data and evidences and present or future scenario. After completion of decision making process, there a moment comes when an individual needs to choose to act or not to act. It is a result of strategic thinking and practice over time to be able to use a decision making style to the advantage and profit of an organization. Nurturing all the decision making styles according to the situation would strengthen the opportunities and mitigate the weakness of an organization or team.

Reference list
Abubakar, A.M., Elrehail, H., Alatailat, M.A. and Elçi, A., 2019.Knowledge management, decision-making style and organizational performance. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 4(2), pp.104-114.

Azeska, A., Starc, J. and Kevereski, L., 2017. Styles of decision making and management and dimensions of personality of school principals. International Journal of Cognitive Research in Science, Engineering and Education, 5(2), p.47.

Cosenza, M., Ciccarelli, M. and Nigro, G., 2019.Decision-making styles, negative affectivity, and cognitive distortions in adolescent gambling. Journal of Gambling Studies, 35(2), pp.517-531.

Freelon, R., 2018. Transformational resistance and parent leadership: Black parents in a school district decision-making process. Organizational behavior assignment Urban Education, p.0042085918801886.

Hine, K.A., Porter, L.E., Westera, N.J., Alpert, G.P. and Allen, A., 2018.Exploring police use of force decision-making processes and impairments using a naturalistic decision-making approach. Criminal justice and Behavior, 45(11), pp.1782-1801.

Kabassi, K., 2019. Evaluating museum websites using a combination of decision-making theories. Journal of Heritage Tourism, 14(5-6), pp.544-560.

Lin, X., Featherman, M., Brooks, S.L. and Hajli, N., 2019. Exploring gender differences in online consumer purchase decision making: An online product presentation perspective. Information Systems Frontiers, 21(5), pp.1187-1201.

Parker, A.M., Bruine de Bruin, W., Fischhoff, B. and Weller, J., 2018. Robustness of decision?making competence: Evidence from two measures and an 11?year longitudinal study. Journal of behavioral decision making, 31(3), pp.380-391.

Stankevich, A., 2017. Explaining the consumer decision-making process: Critical literature review. Journal of International Business Research and Marketing, 2(6).