GROUP COHESION

Individual versus Group Decision Making

Individual versus Group Decision Making

Introduction

In our society, many consequential decisions are group decisions. Group decisions are subject to many of the same possible errors in the decision-making process as individual decisions. A coherent group decision will hopefully be a better decision than an individual decision. Have not we always been taught that: “Two heads are better than one”? An individual or group is repeatedly faced with the problem of choosing one alternative from a feasible alternative set. For an individual people, the problem is the identification of the most preferred alternative according to his/her preference structure. However, for group decision making, except the aforementioned task, another fundamental problem is how to aggregate the experts' opinion to obtain a satisfactory result for the group. In this paper, we are going to compare and contrast the individual decision making and group decision making. Furthermore, we will discuss different concept of decision making with reference to groups and individual.

Discussion

Managers in organizations can rarely anticipate the exact consequences of their actions. Often they might not even be able to make precise judgments concerning the probabilities with which various outcomes will occur. Consider, for example, an executive who needs to decide whether to launch a new product to the market, or whether to invest money in a research project exploring an innovative but untested technology. In both cases, the Decision Maker (DM) cannot assign precise probability estimates to the likelihood of failure or success of these ventures. To cope with such intense uncertainties managers generally seek advice from experts and consult with peers before deciding on a course of action. Often critical decisions are delegated to groups of decision makers (for example committees, juries and boards of directors) (Song, 2009). In some circumstances, groups make better decisions than individuals. However, it can also be seen that in some circumstances individuals make better decisions than groups. As a group, there is an increased capability to develop alternatives to a problem, but due to the larger number of people involved in the rational decision making-process, evaluating and selecting the best alternative may take a larger amount of time. This increase in time may be due to internal conflicts and pressures of attempting to conform (Proctor, 2011).

It can be seen that groups make better decisions based on the following concepts: the ability to utilize a greater amount of knowledge due to an aggregation of the resources of several individuals; the ability to develop a larger diversity of views; greater acceptance of a solution; and increased legitimacy, due to a decision-making process that is consistent with democratic ideals (Isaksen, 2011, p. 261).

Likewise, it can be seen that groups make poor decisions based on the following concepts: an increased time consumption when dealing with a group decision making process, as opposed to one decision maker; the pressure to conform amongst individuals within the group cause withholding of definite decisions; the domination by the few may block the good ideas of the many; lastly, ambiguous responsibility ...