Theories for Decision Making

Theories for Decision Making Introduction Nowadays, there are different kinds of management techniques among people, especially communicating within a group of people in particular discussion. During the discussion, process in making effective and credible decision is very important in order to draw a result without any conflicts generally. Many people are facing a problem about the usage of group progress, that good and bad decision making may be quite complicated towards some people. Good decision making means that every member will agree with each other in order to work together effectively among their jobs, while bad decision making will be made if people cannot firmly make their decision well and cause vicious effect on their work. Although there are many group members, especially leaders of group try their best to discover more ways to cooperate with colleagues, while conflicts still can be found everywhere due to different viewpoints and ideas are firmly held in someone’s mind (Collin et al., 2012).. However, no matter you are alone, or even being a part of group, your decision making may still be affected as own decision making can be easily affected by group’s opinion. Therefore being a group leader, they should know how to form good decision making, and how to prevent bad decision making during the discussion process. From past to now, many social psychologists have point out that good decision making can be drawn if well-organised and critical thinking should be found in group leaders, even members. In the essay below, some relevant theories and critical explanations will be combined in order to provide an informational discussion on how to making good and bad decision (Busenitz Barney, 1997). Moreover research evidences may also be used in supporting the process for good decision making, and the reason why people may draw such bad decision during discussions. This kind of organisations can provide a critical and informative essay in discussing the procedures within g ood and bad decision making in the group. Path to make good decisions (Relevant Theories) In the past few decades, there are many social psychologists point out that some personal mental behaviours may affect the discussion, especially making decision among team members. Zajonc claim that if there are any appropriate response or arousal, group performance and members can be enhanced (Zajonc, 1965). Therefor the Drive Theory of Social Facilitation (Zajonc, 1965) can welly explain the reason why people would like to generate better decision while group members can provide good environment and decision. Because this kind of way can evaluate apprehension during discussion, in order to reduce conflicts and worries, which can let group members be more relax to make good decision (Seo Barrett, 2007). Being a member in a group, many cases show that they cannot have effective communication among those team members as they will keep holding their own ideas or viewpoints, then it may cause lots of conflicts in arguing for decision making in particular issue. In this situation, facilitators and bystanders are required among disussion in order to provide another viewpoints, which is different from the insiders. According to Bibb Latane and John Darley (1970), People, especially bystanders among the situation may have higher chance to perform better behaviours and make good decision, when they are facing any emergency situation in the society (Latane Darley, 1968). Regarding to the Emergency Norm Theory, bystanders may have higher chance to help other people, which be pointed out that people will be persuaded to aid those needs. In similar, facilitators in a group take the role to identify those problems with a third-person view that may not suffer in any bias. Facilitators should not be directive in any ideas as they should stay outside and provide independent opinion. In the office environment, each team members, or colleagues should work together that without any bias. Then third-person view and special ideas may be made during particular discussion between each other (Bickman, 1971). Therefore people should ensure their own psychological status in order to maintain stable discussion behind conflicts. Before making good decision during a series of discussion, deep understanding of particular discussion topic is very important as pointed out by Kurt Lewin. Lewin said â€Å"You cannot understand a system until you try to change it†, it means that changing of mental and physical behaviour is useful for a team to draw effective and powerful decision among different kinds of conflicts. Moreover leaders who really want to form good decision within their own group, working environment should be well designed because behaviour is a combination of individuals and proper environment, which is proposed by Lewin (Brug et al., 2006). At the beginning of changes or even discussion, separate discussions within subgroups are required as it can provide sufficient spaces for members to discuss their own ideas in order to form a small conclusion. After that proper support and mind setting should be given towards group member or colleagues, therefore they can have more effective ways to mainta in and try their best to have new job or make any decision under harmonious decision making process. In order to provide more effectiveness of their own points of view, those social psychologists have already pay more efforts in generate several research and conduct different experiment to point out their power of theories. Path to make good decision (Relevant Researches) According to Zajonc’s cockroaches experiment which explain the behaviour of a group of cockroaches in tacking different level of tasks, in order to point out the changes of human behaviours during group processing. During the experiment, cockroaches are assigned a simple task and a more difficult task for them to complete while a group cockroaches will need to be do it together. Zajonc (1969) would like to find out whether a group can provide better results in these kinds of task or not. However, Zajonc found out that group of cockroaches can complete a simple tasks under the social facilitation while they cannot complete such difficult tasks in front of their peers under social inhibition (Zajonc et al., 1970). Generally, the basic concepts and usage of theory can be wisely applied into human being as these kinds of behaviours can also be found on a group of people during discussion, especially decision making. Because people would like to perform well in front of other people in order to gain confidence and recognition, however people cannot be compare with cockroaches due to higher intelligence ability can be on human being than that on cockroaches (Zajonc, Wolosin, Wolosin Sherman, 1968). Apart from Zajonc’s studies, Bibb Latene and John Darley (1970) have done an experiment in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of bystander intervention, which means people would like to help others who need helps. In real life situation, people definitely give a helping hand towards people who are suffering in distress, such as destruction caused by natural disasters and problems carried by human disasters. In addition, the experiment have also stated out that fewer people will help others in emergency if the group size become larger. Therefore leaders should prevent oversize of each group, and they may put two to four people in a group, while several subgroups should be used in order to maintain better communication and decision making (Petty et al., 1977). Although Latene and Darley pointed out that increasing in size of group while decreasing in percentage of helps generally, the results generated in experiment may not be suitable to be applied on people nowadays. The r eason is the experiment had been done in 1970s, which may be quite far from past to now, and the situation would not be well to compare with 21st century. People would like to help each other even the group size is greater than 6, such as most of the Hong Kong citizens would like to participate in helping re-construction of destroyed building after disasters, even donation of money, therefore it may not be possible to explain human behaviours nowadays (Latane, B., Darley, J. M., 1968). During the discussion, good decision making will not be the only products among group members, conflicts may be found within insufficient communication and impartial viewpoints of leaders. So bad decision making may be discovered and it has already been explained by several social psychologists with several theories in the past decades. Path to make bad decision (Relevant Theories) First of all, Solomon Asch had also pointed out that people would like to follow the other’s opinion, especially the majority ideas. During the discussion progress, group members are generally compelled by the authority in order to fit their expected results (Laughlin, 1988). In most of cases, team members would try their best to persuade themselves and pretend themselves to agree with the majority opinion, while throw their own personal ideas. This kinds of action stated that the reason why they would like to follow majority decision is they do not want to be such minority, which may be easily shamed by those eye contact from other team members. Therefore leaders should prevent team members agree with each other easily and shortly, as it means that they just follow others ideas and wish to form the results which fit the need of authority (Asch, 1951) In most of the discussion cases, it may be very strange that group members can only spend a few time to conduct their discussion, and decision can be made in such an easy way as they said to leaders. Because of this, good decision cannot be made wisely due to such inappropriate discussion method and it will not able to solve their own problems. As said by Irving Janis (1982), group members may not wish to point out their own ideas as they think that their opinion should fit the need of their leader, even boss. They will only filter such undesirable input in order to give out some results which may be similar to leader’s viewpoint. Within this situation, decision that made by those group members should not be the true opinion from themselves, these kinds of decision are just the expected result of leaders, therefore good and fair decision which are agreed with all members may not able to be made by the whole group (Janis, 1972). During the development of human being, they are born to obey norms, which is given out by any authorities. Stanley Milgram stated out that people will follow the instructions which are told by other people, especially those authorities such as government. Conformism can be the reason why those people would like to obey the rules or even instruction that proposed by other authorities agencies (Milgram, 1978). In the discussion, if the leaders or boss point out that they expect people to perform the particular results and decision, most of the group members would like to follow its information and form that expected decision. It may not be beneficial towards the whole group because decision making do not include any bystanders’ ideas, while the whole progress of decision making is based on the expected opinion from leaders. Therefore pre-decision should not be include in the discussion, even during decision making. Role and Rules are very important among the normal life, especially the situation of discussion and decision making as different people will take responsibility to act as particular role during the discussion. Stanley Zimbardo pointed out that great changes can be found if good people are put into bad environment. And it means that extreme changes in social environment can definitely affect the movement of everyone (Zimbardo et al., 2000). Within the working environment, if there are only a small amount of members who are willing to propose positive and effective ideas towards the group, even company, the proper decision also may not be made as they are being surrounded by those negative ideas. Because of the majority in the group is fulfilling negative mind of the discussion, it will affect the other who have positive ideas. Therefore those subordinate position would be summit to the authority, which is the leader or boss. Regarding to this kind of problems, good decision making should not be found because there will not have proper and non-directive discussion due to the power of such social situation is really affect the disposition of people and all of the members who hold positive idea will be compelled to agree with the majority. Then in order to have better process in making good decision, no matter leaders or boss should put more efforts on enhance colleagues’ attitude. Regarding to explain deeply about the related theories, several social psychologist have already done quite a lot experiment or researches in order to explain their viewpoints wisely. Path to make bad decision (Relevant Researches) In Asch’s research which was conducted in 1955, it can definitely point out that most of the people included in the experiment would like to follow the majority among the decision making within groups. Because they try their best to fit the expected answer that can truly explain with some real life example nowadays, there are still quite a lot of people would like to follow the majority among groups within the society generally. However, this experiment was conducted during the cultural environment of 1950s America, it still had a fluctuated changes in the results when it was applied in different time ranges. Therefore statistics in this experiment cannot be used exactly in 21st century, while its concept and basic information can be wisely apply into the daily life generally. Within both Zimbardo and Milgram’s experiments and researches, they have generally explained the concept of conformity of people. First of all, a large group of people are divided into two subgroups in order to act as guards and prisoners respectively for a period of time. The experiment can definitely point out the role and rules ideas, while heightening anonymity and dehumanization behaviours. However those people who act as prisoners have already been suffered in several kinds of psychological problems after six days, therefore the experiment was forced to be stopped (Zimbardo, Maslach Haney, 2000). Apart from this, Milgram’s shock experiment has stated that people would like to obey other authority, even they know that these kinds of decision may not be appropriate within their own personal mind. Although Milgram’s research pointed out many effective explanation in conformism, criticism can be found in his experiment. In this experiment, Milgram only use a group of American to conduct this shock experiment while it cannot represent the whole population in the world, because there will be a difference among other countries. America and European countries will be much obedience and similar described as Milgram’s result, while Asian and Muslim countries are less obedience as Milgram’s experiment. Both of the researches from Zimbardo and Milgram are very remarkable and supportive in the field of social psychology nowadays. Although some ethical concerns and cross-cultural validity may need to be aware, some ideas and concepts still have their value in conducting continuous studies in related studies. Conclusion To conclude, making a good decision is quite difficult during the particular discussion, because bad decision making may be easily found if leaders do not communicate and cooperate well with each other. In order to make good decision, leaders should not take all the responsibilities to make decision, while they are required to give out some power to colleagues, that can let them have their own ideas and opinion about own mission. Otherwise all of the group members will just follow the decision of leaders before such kind of discussion, and those expected results will be generate without any agreement between each other (Higgins, 2000). In order to enhance effectiveness in making good decision, different subgroups are required if the whole size of group is too large. Because every group member cannot communicate well within the oversize groups, and leaders may discuss with subgroups respectively before the whole meeting, even decision making (Øvretveit, 1995). These kinds of situation can prevent blindly obedience to that authority, which can provide more chance for leaders and members to communicate during discussion before making any decision. Therefore good decision making is the responsibility of group leaders, while each group members are needed to put more efforts in communicating between each other within every complicated progress (Gerrig, 2013). References Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. Groups, leadership, and men, 222-236. Bickman, L. (1971). The effect of another bystanders ability to help on bystander intervention in an emergency. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 7(3), 367-379. Busenitz, L. W., Barney, J. B. (1997). Differences between entrepreneurs and managers in large organizations: Biases and heuristics in strategic decision-making. Journal of business venturing, 12(1), 9-30. Brug, J., van Lenthe, F. J., Kremers, S. P. (2006). Revisiting Kurt Lewin: how to gain insight into environmental correlates of obesogenic behaviors. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 31(6), 525-529. Collin, C., Grand, V., Benson, N., Lazyan, M., Ginsburg, J., Weeks, M. (2012).The psychology book. (pp. 216-257). London, England: Dorling Kindersley Limited. Gerrig, R. J. (2013).Psychology and life. (20th ed., pp. 447-472). the United States of America: Pearson Education, Inc. Higgins, E. T. (2000). Making a good decision: value from fit. American Psychologist, 55(11), 1217. Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Latane, B., Darley, J. M. (1968). Group inhibition of bystander intervention in emergencies. Journal of personality and social psychology, 10(3), 215. Laughlin, P. R. (1988). Collective induction: Group performance, social combination processes, and mutual majority and minority influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54(2), 254. Milgram, S. (1978). Obedience to authority. Petty, R. E., Harkins, S. G., Williams, K. D., Latanà ©, B. (1977). The effects of group size on cognitive effort and evaluation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 3(4), 579-582. Seo, M. G., Barrett, L. F. (2007). Being emotional during decision making—good or bad? An empirical investigation. Academy of Management Journal, 50(4), 923-940. Zajonc, R. B., Wolosin, R. J., Wolosin, M. A., Sherman, S. J. (1968). Individual and group risk-taking in a two-choice situation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 4(1), 89-106. Zajonc, R. B., Wolosin, R. J., Wolosin, M. A., Loh, W. D. (1970). Social facilitation and imitation in group risk-taking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 6(1), 26-46. Zimbardo, P. G., Maslach, C., Haney, C. (2000). Reflections on the Stanford prison experiment: Genesis, transformations, consequences. Obedience to authority: Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm, 193-237. Øvretveit, J. (1995). Team decision-making. Journal of Interprofessional care, 9(1), 41-51.

The Joy Luck Club :: essays research papers

The Joy Luck Club   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The Joy luck club was a book written by Amy Tan. The story is set here in America and in China and is set in the 1940's and also takes place now. The book is about four Asian women who fled china and their Americanized daughters.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  There are eight main characters four of which were mothers and four of which were daughters. They were Suyuan Woo, Ying-yang St. Clair, An-mei Hsu, and Lindo Jong, who were the mothers, and the daughters Jing-mei Woo, Rose Hsu Jordan, Waverly Jong, Lena St. Clair. In the book it tells the story of each of the mothers and what they went through from the eyes of their daughters.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The book mostly focuses on Jing-mei Woo, who takes the place of her mother in the Joy Luck Club meetings after the death of her mother. In the meetings with the other mothers she reminisced about her mother and heard new stories about her mother she had never heard before. She hears stories of how it was her mother came to America and what she left behind in China.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The book starts off in China with a woman imagining what life in America raising a daughter would be like. Hoping that she would be an American but still have her Chinese heritage. But in the end her daughter turns out to be as Americanized as they come not realizing her Chinese heritage. This makes it so that they don't communicate very well and makes it so they don't know very much about each other.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  This book shows that now days the traditions of the older generations are slowly being filtered out by the younger generations. An example in the book is when one of the mothers had her marriage pre-arranged by her parents and a friend of the family and the fact that she accepted the marriage.

Powder by Tobias Wolff Essay

One of the most renowned American writers, Tobias Wolff is known mainly for his work on the memoir, and short stories. He was part of a new wave of writers, including Andre Dubus and Raymond Carver, who ushered in a novel style of fiction writing, which is all at once real yet incredible, grounded yet detached, but always engaging. Wolff wrote his short story â€Å"Powder† as part of his 1996 collection entitled The Night In Question. There are only two major characters in the story—the teenaged narrator and his father, and everything takes place within the area of Mount Baker, a skiing resort. The fact that the boy’s parents were on the verge of divorce is established early on, and some of the implied reasons lie in the father’s character. Three descriptions were used in the first few paragraphs of the story that alluded to the father—â€Å"he had to fight for the privilege†, â€Å"he wouldn’t give up†, and â€Å"he was indiff erent to my fretting†. These three descriptive phrases convey a picture of a man with an aggressive nature, and would always pursue what he wants; this is proven by his keeping the flashy Austin-Healey, by insisting on taking his son to a club, and by being focused on bringing him home—so as not to get his wife’s ire, for he believes they would still be able to patch things up. At the end of the story, it is the son himself who uses several adjectives on his father—â€Å"rumpled, kind, bankrupt of honor, flushed with certainty. He was a great driver. All persuasion, nor coercion.† After reading the story in its entirety, one would be able to associate the seemingly carefree and spontaneous characterization of the father to his being a man of gentle manner, yet gregarious tone; what his son lacked in youthfulness and spirit, he completely made up for. The methods of character development, as applied to the story, further examines the contrasting personalities of father and son: Narrative summary without judgment. While the father is almost explicitly judged through specific mentions of behavior and mindsets, the son, being the narrator, only reveals his true character of being methodical and systematic at the end of the story. The reader will only assume him to be a young boy easily influenced by his father. Narrative description with implied or explicit judgment. Exactly the way the father is discussed, as mentioned previously. Surface details of dress and appearance. For the father, the main points would be his Austin-Healey, and his son’s mention of his being rumpled, kind, and forty-eight years old. The son is later described, through his system with his clothes hangers, as being forward-thinking and methodical, and not exactly one who would take risks. Character’s actions—what they do. The father is eager, spontaneous, and has no regard for rules, except when already in dire straits. Character’s speech—what they say. Using words like â€Å"Vamanos†, and â€Å"Buck up† shows the casual personality of the father, and the boy’s prim manner and speech validates his guarded nature. While the father’s character seems to be the more â€Å"explored† of the two, it simply shows their contrasting personalities, and how unusual these are for a child and an adult. But in truth, the concept of fresh powder represents the boy’s realization about new and uncharted territories far beyond his always-prepared itinerary. Without his father, who believes in persuading people to given in or help, the boy would have never seen how things are not always measured and studied, and that often one has to see where the road will take him.

Cultural Issues of Human Resource Management - 4615 Words

International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring Vol. 5. No. 2 August, 2007 Page 45 Carrying Cultural Baggage: the contribution of socio-cultural anthropology to cross-cultural coaching Barbara St Claire-Ostwald, CINCRA International Coaching Training Consultancy, UK Email Contact: barbara@cincra.com Abstract This study examines the cultural awareness of professionals working in organisations. Given the multicultural nature of today’s workforce, it is becoming increasingly important for companies and coaches alike to take into account how cross-cultural differences may affect daily working practices. The study draws on a review of current research into cultural dimensions and looks at the complex relationship between†¦show more content†¦Thus, one could argue that the socioanthropological perspective on culture takes a holistic view, describing culture as a pattern of learned and shared behaviours of people and/or groups consisting of belief systems and languages; and of social relationships be they personal, organisational, or institutional. (Hall, 1963; Hall and Hall, 1987; Hofstede, 1980; Kondo, 1990; Levi-Strauss, 1966; Schwartz, 1994). Therefor e, at a fundamental level, it could be argued that culture is a representation of a complete way of life of a people who share the same attitudes, values and practices. Csikszentmihalyi (1997, p.7) makes the distinction of ‘identity’ by using snowflakes as a metaphor: â€Å"They look identical as they fall, but taking a closer look, we soon discover that they are not identical†. 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