Achieving Judgement And Decision Making In An Organization: A Book Review

The Importance of Values in Decision Making

This abstract is based on two books. The first book, “knowing what you want: measuring liable values”, is used in making judgements. The second book, “decision making: descriptive, normative and prescriptive interaction”, is used in decision making. Therefore, this abstract will revolve the two books in achieving judgement and decision making in an organization. From the first book, the article asserts that individuals should be of value, ability to make choice and possess good attitude in making judgements. It further states that different people possess well-defined opinions that are based on desirability of various occurrences and events. However, individuals are urged to conduct careful questioning when making judgements since the results of those judgements actively represents people’s underlying values. Again, the book also assert that, it is important for people to analyze what they want before making judgements. This is because, in circumstances where people do not know what they want or face difficulties in deciding on what they want, a lot of random errors may occur thus becoming a major force in shaping the values one hoped to express. In this chapter, the book connects those who hold values and those who elicit values. In simple terms, it means making evaluative judgements. In that case, individuals will be able to fit fully in opinions, decision making and attributes. This section helps individuals to understand various aspects in making judgements such as how to pose problems, how to phrase questions and how to give responses in judgements that can portray true values. There are certain psychophysics of values that influence judgement and make people to have clear preference on issues. They also help to know when and how people might not know what they want. These values include; having no opinion, having incoherent opinion and living with incoherence. All these values results to impaired judgement and unsound decision making.

This other section is a detailed example on how the above aspects relate to work experience. To start with, it is painful to acknowledge having incoherent opinion. In workplace, many are times when workers are faced with challenging situations which they never anticipated. Thus, making proper judgement and decisions become a challenge. These workers are left without opinions. The sad thing is that, they fail to realize that they lack opinions on particular issues. Other workers have incoherent opinions and still do not realize it. Again, a group of some workers live with incoherence in their workplace. All these issues affects judgement and decision making. The best solutions to these problems are; have an opinion on particular issues and make sure you realize that opinion, then ensure your opinion is coherent at all times and finally avoid living in incoherence. It is also important to access those opinions properly so as to promote proper judgements and sound decision making in workplace.  

Psychophysics of Values and Their Influence on Judgement

This abstract is based on the book, “Theories of risk perception: who fear what any why?” To begin with, risk perception refers to ability of an individual to discern a certain amount of risk. Therefore, this contextual framework tries to analyze factors affecting risks perception and theories of risk perception on who fears what and why? First, risk perception relate closely to judgement and decision making. This implies that, factors affecting risk perception also affects judgement and decision making in equal measures. These factors include macro level factors, meso-level factors as well as micro-level factors. Macro level factors may include the culture of safety and level of safety leadership in within an organization set up. In this case it is important to go beyond the mere psychological analysis of individual risk perception. This will help the individuals to reduce the risks involved in various tasks during the execution of certain obligations in an organization. On Meso-level factors, they may include pressure in the workplace that is subjected by the community and the peers. This influence how people perceives risks and can cause people to go against proper judgement in the work place. Finally on the factors affecting risk perception, micro level factors involves individual perception of risks based on how individuals are informed on certain issues in an organization. Therefore, those individuals who are highly informed will have higher degree in risk perception as compared to less informed individuals. The last pert in this abstract is to analyze theories that relate to risk perception. Ideally, there are several theories that relate to risk perception and they include protection motivation theory, risk homeostasis theory, situated rationality theory, habituated action theory, social action theory and social control theory. For the purpose of this abstract and who fears what and why, we consider protection motivation theory. This theory assert that individuals are able to protect themselves from certain risks and negative impacts associated to those risks by anticipating certain problems in their workplace. Therefore an individual need to know the risk and then protect himself from that risk.

In workplace, a lot of pressure is subjected to individuals by the community and peers. This pressure community or peer pressure can make an individual to take risks that bypass their proper judgement. For example, in a workplace, some newly hired workers may decide to take shortcuts that are unsafe when performing their obligations. This could be as a result of copying what the old workers are doing. The new worker need to perceive these shortcuts as dangerous and perceive the implications associated to those shortcuts. This will trigger better judgement and proper decision making.

Theories of Risk Perception and Their Impact on Decision Making

C Abstract of reading 5.1

This abstract is based on two books. The first book, “the two camps on rationality”, and the second book, “decision making under uncertainty”. It is quite often to see individuals making decision under uncertainty. This is characterized by three factors. First, there are set of opinions and alternatives. The individual is tied on which option to choose from. Secondly, there is a possible state of the world. This implies that, there is a standard action on that particular decision made under uncertainty. Lastly, there are possible consequences that are involved in every action. In addition, there is a decision frame characterized by canonical preferences and decision problem. However, individuals select actions without knowing the implications and imperfect observations.

In workplace, an individual will face a problem to decide a certain issue. When a range of options are at their disposal, individuals will be uncertain of which option to choose. For example, an office secretary who want to file documents will be uncertain on which filling system to use since are a range of filling systems. She end up making a decision to use a particular system without knowing the implications. This could probably be as a result of imperfect observations.

This abstract will be based on the books, “neutral, Omni partial rule making”, and “the ethical manager”. The latter asserts that ethical managers makes decisions and own rules. This assist the managers in resolving conflict between the decision best for their business and their personal code of ethics. Dilemma appears if ethical managers takes into account interest of the 3^rd parties. At times, there is conflict between ethical consideration and business consideration. Although it is hard to resolve conflict on personal rule of conduct, it is good to make a decision that affect the interest of other individuals. It is also good for an ethical manager to balance the interest between the employees and other shareholders. This will promote past, present and future employees satisfaction.

Many managers are faced with a problem on employees and shareholders. A manager will be tied on whether to give the employees the first priority or other shareholders. It is good for an ethical manager to give a balanced interest to both employees and shareholders so as to achieve fairness and tenacity in an organization. This will involve better judgement and decision making.

References

Bell, Raiffa and Tversky, Decision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980)

Diana, Nada, Project Approval Decision: Exploring Success Factors (LAP Lambert Academic Publishing, 2016)

Fischoff, Slovic and Lichtenstein, Knowing what you want: measuring labile values (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1980)

Green, Neutral, Omni partial rule-making (Macmillan, 1984)

Green, the Ethical Manager (Macmillan, 1984)

Ingersoll, Jonathan, Theory of Financial Decision Making (Rowman & Littlefield publishers, 2007)

Jungermann, The two camps on rationality (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1983)

Olusanya, Olauluwa, Emotions, Decision-making and Mass Atrocities (Routledge, 2014)

Scholz, Decision Making under Uncertainty (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1983)

Wildavsky and Dake, Theories of risk perception: who fears what and why? (Daedalus, 1990)