Decision-Making Process

ODDI Process Model - conceptual analysis of the steps or processes that groups generally
follow when making a decision

Four Phases of Decision Making

Orientation - the period where the group reviews its objectives and organizes the procedures it
will use.

This involves:

Goal Clarification - the act of setting the "what"

- specific and attainable goals

- the mission of the group
- problems you're dealing with
- decisions the group must make
- results the group intends to deliver
- criteria to use to evaluate the quality of performance and results

Goal-Path Clarification - the act of setting the "how"

- how you will to achieve the goal

- specifying the task and subtasks and how to do them
- how the members will work together
- how the group will make the decisions
- how long you have by setting deadlines

Importance of Orientation

- groups that have a clarified goal and their path to those goals are more efficient and wastes
less time
- it helps the members develop a shared mental model
- resources are better allocated
- groups that spend time in clarifying their goals and reviewing their procedures are more
effective than those that don't

Problems with Planning

- groups tend to skip the planning phase and start on the task
- groups tend to believe that solutions that worked in the past will work in the current and future
problems
- groups tend to underestimate how long a task will take to finish
- groups tend to overlook possible problems they will encounter

Discussion - the period of communicating information between two or more people for some
shared purpose.

This involves:

Collective Memory Processes - a shared reservoir of information shared by members which has
more capacity and durability.

Information Exchange - the process of exchanging information which helps strengthen the
access to information and recall of that information.

Processing Information - the process where information is discussed, members analyze each
other's ideas and strengths and weaknesses are considered.

Error Detection and Correction - as ideas are being discussed, members appraise their validity
and identify errors and correct them.

The Difficulty of Discussion

Groups Are Forgetful - groups tend to rely on cognitive mechanisms to improve their memory,
but research has shown that without the minutes of the meeting, groups can't remember their
decisions.
Group Members Misunderstand - most members lack the communication skills to express
themselves to others which leads to misleading, confusion, or misunderstandings.

Making the Decision

Social Decision Scheme - a group's methods for combining individual member's inputs to make
a single group decision.

Common Social Decision Schemes:

Averaging: Staticized Decisions - arriving at a decision by allowing all members to present their
ideas and the group will select the best option.

Pros:
- everyone's opinions are equal.
- errors tend to cancel each other out.

Cons:
- members have no need for discussion.
- members may feel little responsibility for implementing the decision.

Voting: Plurality Decisions - arriving at decisions by using a voting procedure.

Types of Voting Procedures:

Majority-Rules Scheme: used when most of the members vote on the same option or
decision.

Borda Count Method: uses a ranking method where all members give points to all
options and the one with the highest rank wins.

Veto Scheme: the group has 1 person with the authority to deny a decision that the
majority has voted for.

Pros:
- making decisions becomes easy and effective.
- can reduce social pressure when done anonymously.

Cons:
- members tend to follow the majority.
- this can lead to internal politics.
Reaching Consensus: Unanimous Decisions - arriving at a decision when every member in the
group agrees on a single decision.

Pros:
- can lead to high levels of commitment and satisfaction.
- has long-term positive effects on performance.

Cons:
- it takes a long time to arrive at a consensus.
- if it's rushed, it can backfire especially on sensitive issues.

Delegating: Sharing Decisions - arriving at decisions by giving the power to an authority figure
such as the leader or a president.

Pros:
- it saves the group time to arrive at decisions.

Cons:
- this gives one person too much power.
- it is also used as a means to avoid responsibility and blame when things go wrong.

Implementation

Once the group has arrived on a decision, two things remain. Implementation and Evaluation.

Under Implementation:

Social Justice - one can tell whether the implementation is successful or not depending on the
fairness of the decision.

Forms of Social Justice:

Distributive Justice - concerned with how rights, resources, and costs are given to
members.

Procedural Justice - concerned with the methods used to make the decisions about the
allocation of resources.

People regard a decision as fair when decisional procedures are implemented:

- consistently
- without self-interest
- on the basis of accurate information
- with opportunities to correct the decision
- with interests of all parties represented
- when moral and ethical standards are followed
- when people believe they had a voice in the matter

Under Evaluation:

When decisions are found to be faulty, the group should:

- evaluate the cause of the problem.

- take responsibility and use the information to make a better decision.

Dysfunctional Post Decision Tendencies:

- groups tend to be overconfident that their decision is the correct one.

- groups prefer to deny responsibility and blame others when decisions result in failure.
SCRIPT:

Every day, we are constantly bombarded by having to make decisions in life, from something as
simple as choosing what to eat for breakfast, to what kind of job you want to get after
graduating.

Just as we, as individuals, make decisions on a daily basis, so do groups of people, whether it's
with your groupmates at school, or the society as a whole.

Generally speaking, the decision making process of individuals are somewhat different from the
decision making process of groups. That's what we will be discussing for today.

So how do groups make their decisions?

Groups generally follow the ODDI Process Model. It is a 4 step model that groups take when
making a decision. O for Orientation, D for Discussion, D for Decision, and I for Implementation.

Now not all groups follow these four steps, but those that do tend to make better decisions than
Groups that don't.

So what is Orientation?

It is the period where the group reviews its objectives and organizes the procedures it will use.
Or in other words, planning.

This involves Goal Clarification, which is the act of setting the "what" such as:

- specific and attainable goals

- the mission of the group
- problems you're dealing with
- decisions the group must make
- results the group intends to deliver
- criteria to use to evaluate the quality of performance and results

and Goal-Path Clarification which is the act of setting the "how" such as:

- how you will to achieve the goal

- specifying the task and subtasks and how to do them
- how the members will work together
- how the group will make the decisions
- how long you have by setting deadlines

So why is planning? or orientation important?

- groups that have a clarified goal and their path to those goals are more efficient and wastes
less time
- it helps the members develop a shared mental model
- resources are better allocated
- groups that spend time in clarifying their goals and reviewing their procedures are more
effective than those that don't

Just as there are benefits to planning, there are also problems. Which are:

- groups tend to skip the planning phase and start on the task
- groups tend to believe that solutions that worked in the past will work in the current and future
problems
- groups tend to underestimate how long a task will take to finish
- groups tend to overlook possible problems they will encounter

Now let's proceed to the second phase of the model which is Discussion, which is the period of
communicating information between two or more people for some shared purpose.

We all know just how important discussion is with your fellow members. A group cannot function
without discussion. Take research for example, if you don't discuss with your groupmates, from
the very start, you are required to discuss with your group what kind of research you will
conduct and so on. Without any discussion, the group is going to fail.

So why is discussion good for the group aside from the obvious? This is because of the
following:

Collective Memory Processes - a shared reservoir of information shared by members which has
more capacity and durability.

Essentially, the brain of the many, is better than the brain of one person. Everyone has their own
unique information and expertise. Groups can also memorize information far better than
individuals can, because one person might know something that the other person doesn't, or
forgot. And so groups take advantage of these during the discussion phase.

Information Exchange - the process of exchanging information which helps strengthen the
access to information and recall of that information.

Similar to what I've mentioned before, since members have different kinds of information that
they know, they can use this information, and even improve the recall of the information
because when it is shared, more people will know, and more people are likely to remember that
information.

Processing Information - the process where information is discussed, members analyze each
other's ideas and strengths and weaknesses are considered.
This is essentially similar to brainstorming, where the information shared by members are
analyzed by others and offer suggestions to the group.

Error Detection and Correction - as ideas are being discussed, members appraise their validity
and identify errors and correct them.

This is one of the key differences between decisions as an individual and as a group. Here, the
members will get live feedback from the other members about their ideas whether it's right or
wrong, and good or bad.

As we all know, during the discussion phase, everything is not all good, there are also difficulties
that come with it. Such as:

Groups Are Forgetful - groups tend to rely on cognitive mechanisms to improve their memory,
but research has shown that without the minutes of the meeting, groups can't remember their
decisions.

Because there are many people within a group, members tend to take it for granted and don't
really think about it and assume that others will remember everything that happened and was
talked about during their discussion. Which is why it's really important to have someone take the
minutes of the meeting so that everything that was discussed will be remembered.

Group Members Misunderstand - most members lack the communication skills to express
themselves to others which leads to misleading, confusion, or misunderstandings.

We've all experienced this, where we have an idea but we find it hard to articulate or express,
and we've also experienced misunderstanding others for the same reason. So when disucssing,
it's also really important to read in between the lines to really understand what others are trying
to say.

Now after the discussion, this is where we make the decision. Usually, when we make decisions
as individuals, we just do it. However, in groups, we know that this is different. Here, we typically
follow a social decision scheme, which is a group's methods for combining individual member's
inputs to make a single group decision.

There are different types of Social Decision Schemes which are:

Averaging: Staticized Decisions - arriving at a decision by allowing all members to present their
ideas and the group will select the best option.

This is something that we've all done before, we've given our ideas and we choose one that we
all agree that is the best one.
Pros:
- everyone's opinions are equal.
- errors tend to cancel each other out.

Cons:
- members have no need for discussion.
- members may feel little responsibility for implementing the decision.

Voting: Plurality Decisions - arriving at decisions by using a voting procedure.

This is also something that we've all done before. Now there are different types of voting
procedure which are:

Types of Voting Procedures:

Majority-Rules Scheme: used when most of the members vote on the same option or
decision.

Borda Count Method: uses a ranking method where all members give points to all
options and the one with the highest rank wins.

Veto Scheme: the group has 1 person with the authority to deny a decision that the
majority has voted for.

Pros:
- making decisions becomes easy and effective.
- can reduce social pressure when done anonymously.

Cons:
- members tend to follow the majority.
- this can lead to internal politics.

Reaching Consensus: Unanimous Decisions - arriving at a decision when every member in the
group agrees on a single decision.

This is similar to Averaging, but here, the members don't necessarily give out their ideas, but
they all agree in doing or taking the same decision.

Pros:
- can lead to high levels of commitment and satisfaction.
- has long-term positive effects on performance.

Cons:
- it takes a long time to arrive at a consensus.
- if it's rushed, it can backfire especially on sensitive issues.

Delegating: Sharing Decisions - arriving at decisions by giving the power to an authority figure
such as the leader or a president.

This is where there is a leader and the leader is the one that chooses what the group will decide
on.

Pros:
- it saves the group time to arrive at decisions.

Cons:
- this gives one person too much power.
- it is also used as a means to avoid responsibility and blame when things go wrong.

Once the group has arrived on a decision, two things remain. Implementation and Evaluation.

Under Implementation:

Social Justice - one can tell whether the implementation is successful or not depending on the
fairness of the decision.

Forms of Social Justice:

Distributive Justice - concerned with how rights, resources, and costs are given to members.

Here, it's important to give everyone a voice, because if the group members feel that they're left
out, they will feel that it's unfair, there is no distributive justice.

Procedural Justice - perceived fairness and legitimacy of

the methods used to make decisions, resolve disputes,
and allocate resources.

In procedural justice, let's say that everyone agrees on one decision, but you decide to do
something else, everyone will find it wrong and unfair.

People regard a decision as fair when decisional procedures are implemented:

- consistently
- without self-interest
- on the basis of accurate information
- with opportunities to correct the decision
- with interests of all parties represented
- when moral and ethical standards are followed
- when people believe they had a voice in the matter

Now why are they important? Because when fair procedures

are followed, group members feel more satisfied
with the decision and will be more likely to perform the tasks that are required to implement the
decision.

Under Evaluation:

When decisions are found to be faulty, the group should:

- evaluate the cause of the problem.

- take responsibility and use the information to make a better decision.

Dysfunctional Post Decision Tendencies:

- groups tend to be overconfident that their decision is the correct one.

- groups prefer to deny responsibility and blame others when decisions result in failure.

Sometimes, no matter how perfect the plan and execution of the plan is, something will go
wrong, which is why it's really important to evaluate the decisions that we make. Because that is
how we learn and improve. That was all for my part, thank you.