The Process of Decision-Making in Organizations - Essay Example

Decision-making Decision-making forms an integral part of an organization, though not been shown in the spotlight many a times. The process of decision-making in organizations has got varied dimensions from different people and from different quarters. It is still posing to be a continuing debate. This is largely to due to the increase in complexity of modern organizations, the number of divisions or sub units within a division through which several decisions has to go through for approval. Apart from this, nine out of ten times an organization faces a situation to take decisions regarding organizational and transformational process. (Salaman, 2001. p.75) A smooth-decision making process is important for well-running of the organization. Decision-making process is considered to be the most important work the managers are assigned to deal with in an organization. This view is further consolidated by the fact that some people view managing and decision-making has two words with same meaning but different interpretations. There are infinite reasons to consider decision-making to be an integral part of organizations, a theory which has interested most of the theorists and economists. (Salaman, 2001. p.75) Some theorists believe that decision-making provides the door to the so called 'underworld' of an organization. The process involved in making a decision, brings out the political attitude of people involved, resulting in political activities being performed. So, it can be conceived that decision-making brings out two extreme conclusions about an organization. One end shows the strength of an organization in making crucial decisions, showing the solidarity of the management and their power. The other extreme is where the political games are played, where the leads play around the resources to get the decisions to go in their favour. Decisions made in an organization is always power played by people in influential powers and the way each decision shapes after going through these people is not even known to the people involved in it. The end decision always has as a byproduct in terms of disharmony within the organization but it is almost inherent and non deniable. (Salaman, 2001. p.97) According to Pettigrew, every decision has the above said political perspective added to it. According to him, an organization is a political playground, with different sub units having different perspective about a decision and each unit opposes the other in terms of their views, their struggle to show majority and finally, ending up in a lot of major implications both for nature and the end-decision. He views this political aspect of decision making to form the crux of any organization in creating the core structural and organizational processes. Several theists say that most of the people involved in decision making view governments as organization but find it reluctant to agree that all organizations are governments. (Salaman, 2001. p.97) They further reason for the neglect of this aspect explaining that people view decision making as part of a formal structure of an organization rather than viewing it as a political structure. Most people tend to work on decision making in psychological terms instead of seeing it in a sociological basis. In short, no person tends to see them as being political and in case if they act so, they justify it by reasoning that they do it for the well being of the organization. There are several features for this political perspective of decision-making that lends support to it. Pettigrew observes these features and explains how important they are to an organization. (Salaman, 2001. p.97) According to him, every organization is a group of several sub organizations. He views it to be a political system that is open for all. These sub-organizations specialize on each work and some of them may have to be dependent on one another to produce the result. In such cases of inter-dependence, a joint decision has to be done in a decision making process. These kinds of processes pave way for people to make demand in terms of their sub organization. This may cascade to further sub divisions of organizations. This process results in conflict between two organizations. This is further fuelled in a resource based decision, when the resource is too scarce and very much required. In general, the involvement of these sub organizations in such decision making process as explained above bring out the political perspective of decision making. (Salaman, 2001. p.98) People strive for getting the resources from others in order to increase their success. And in order to be successful in their claim, they go for the much needed support from other co workers, to strengthen their position. This in turn brings out the politician inside the managers, playing out all kinds of tactics to defeat the other. With the above example, Pettigrew infers that in any organization where there is resource sharing and where there is scarcity of resources, the behavior of leaders will always have the political instinct added to them. He further stresses that, as long as there is division of power to people and with workforce behind them to support, people will always defend their point of view which may result in a growth in their professional career. When such growth is predicted for people who defend and strive for achieving what they view, then they will always push for it, ending up being political. (Salaman, 2001. p.98) The next feature associated with political behavior is that it is looming to play a large part in big organizations which have large number of divisions. Such kind of presence would largely affect the way resources are shared between each department and how the decisions are made on the new resources. With introduction of new resources, people get the opportunity to improve their growth and hence pounce on it with full hands. This might lead to chaos in decision-making and invoke political action in decision processes that are done jointly. On a final note, this may result in how the power is distributed among sub units within organizations. (Salaman, 2001. p.98) An example that could be considered here is the situation that arises from new challenges thrown by large scale computer installations in organizations. Such a change not only changes how the work was done but, it also changes the management of people. Several issues could arise out of this change in technology. There are issues with people of different sides, that is, people doing work related to computer and those who don't. So, the command of authority in decision making gets shared depending on value contributed by either side as resources. Their claim for resources too gets implied by this characteristic. The control gets transferred to and fro between these two sub systems of organization and this finally results in conflicting with leadership system of the entire organization. (Salaman, 2001. p.98) People who work as programmers are not sustained long enough, or would rather say, there recognition for work does not match up with their abilities. This is because the technology keeps on changing and fresh talents are continuously acquired by organizations. What it results in is that the command on resources gets varied depending on the knowledge owned by the programmers to their skills required for the current technology. Once the command gets varied, the support for the persons who claim for any resources varies and here in by comes the political mind's work. So, in such organizations, the environment is not secure, and the political aspect plays a big part when decisions are made relating to the future of programmers. (Salaman, 2001. p.99) While trying to analyze the determinants that affect the political behavior in decision making, Pettigrew concludes that, a deep analysis of the strategies followed by people who make claims have to be made and how they garner support for their claim has to be discussed. A precise difference of power and authority has to be made to understand the concept of politics. (Salaman, 2001. p.100) Power and authority play a major role in joint decision making process where political behavior is seriously involved as described. Here the politics factor of decision making comes to the fore when all heads from all departments have their say and vision but what vision come to existence depends on the power the owner of that vision has. (Salaman, 2001. p.100) Pettigrew accepts that authority is the only basic layer on which power is built. Authority is also a power but it is institutionalized and people can enact their authority only to achieve the goals desired by the organization. Realization of authority leads to the concept of leadership. On the basis of political behavior, leadership is most needed for the person with authority to gather people to support his claim in decision making. One of the qualities for leadership is prestige which in turn depends upon the excise of authority on people. This execution in turn relates to how well the leader mingles with fellow mates and how well he decides on when to exert it depending on the context. (Salaman, 2001. p.100) Contrasting to authority and leadership, power is not sociological enactment on dependence but, a force exerted on dependants to do a work which they would have rejected if the force is not present. The amount of force exerted depends on the dependency the dependants have, which then leads us to another feature of political behavior, dependence. (Salaman, 2001. p.102) An individual can exploit his power on a dependant with his resources, opportunities and skill sets. So, dependency can be explained as the ability of an individual to enact his power on the other who is devoid of resources, skill sets and opportunities that the other is possessing. This kind of power over dependants comes only if the individual has both the right of ownership and a skill of controlling those resources. It can be concluded that, an individual who has dependants and who can handle the relationship with the dependants well has the key to succeed in enacting his power. (Salaman, 2001. p.102) An example situation where politics as well as power plays a major role is given here. The failure of execution of power by the superior over his dependants led to failure in management and reform in a mental institution. The persons in superior role, that is the physicians, depended largely on the attendants because of their irregularity towards the administration and their tenure as physicians. This resulted in attendants politically gaining more rights in their claim on decision-making processes with regard to patients. If the physicians got involved with decision making processes to large effect, then the attendants didn't take up the responsibilities that they would have and this resulted in failure of the whole hospitals. The number of patients getting cured soared to low point that they had to close the whole institution. The above clearly explains how dependency, a fundamental determinant of power determines the running of the organization. According to Pettigrew, this universally proves the whole aspect of political perspective involved in decision making. (Salaman, 2001. p.103) The other factor involved in bringing out the political aspect is the mobilization of power and the control over flow of information. The control over flow of information can aptly described when there are times the superior has to depend on his sub -ordinates to get the job done. The sub-ordinates may take full advantage of this when joint decision-making processes are held by withholding the information that needs to be sent to the superior to gain undue advantage over others. On such a situation, the political aspect plays a major role in gaining the upper hand in presenting their view. (Salaman, 2001. p.104) An example of how a superior has to depend on his sub ordinate is given here. In technology based environments, the superior has to depend on the technical person to conceive a decision. The technical person provides the information on what are all possible to do and not to do. The superior then has to take a decision only on his view. This is where the sub- ordinate gains advantage. But saying so, wouldn't mean that the technical expert would take charge in a joint decision process. Without even considering the scope of the problem, one could say the expert is not in ranks that could oppose any opinions given by his superiors. In addition to that, the superiors have the fire power to decide on whether to keep or leave an expert. Or in some other situations, the superiors might hire some other persons on technical advices rather than listening to the technical experts. So, the control over flow of information by sub-ordinates does not form a major part in decision-making, but certainly forms an integral part in the political aspect of it. (Salaman, 2001. p.104) On a concluding note, Pettigrew explains that the power of superiors and several other factors explained above decide on the decision-making process which in turn forms the core of structural and organizational relationships. Since power and authority are two important determinants of political culture, it could be inferred that political perspective of decision making is the major attribute for successful organizational relationship. Power and authority are two main determinants that explain about the two major characteristics of political structure in decision-making, demand processing and support generation. In short, the execution power in demand of support aids the political view of decision-making processes. (Salaman, 2001. p.106) References Salaman, G.(2001). Decision making for business. London, UK. Sage. Read More