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Barriers to effective decision making in an organization
Decision making is the process of choosing one alternative from a set of rational alternatives. The barriers/constraints to decision making include;
(i) Multiple criteria
Typically, a decision today must satisfy a number of often conflicting criteria representing the interest of different groups. Identifying the interest group and trading off their conflicting interest is a major challenge for today’s decision maker.
(ii) Intangibles
Factors such as customer goodwill, employee morale, increased bureaucracy, and aesthetic appeal, although difficult to measure, often determine decision alternatives.
(iii) Risk and uncertainty
Along with every decision alternative goes the chance that it will fail to satisfy the relevant criteria
(iv) Time
(v) Inter-disciplinary input
Decision complexity is greatly incurred when technical specialists such as lawyers, advocates, tax advisors, engineers etc are consulted before making a decision.
(vi) Lack of resources
Lack of resources such as adequate information constraints/limits to decisions only to the available information.
Solutions
(i)A clear policy for decision making should be enumerated. This will guide the way in which decisions are made. The policy should embrace codes of ethics, organization mission and goal. This reduces the problem of multiple criteria.
(ii)Clear deadlines. The deadlines to decision making should be clearly communicated and they should also be reasonable to provide time for effective decision being made.
(iii)Decisions makers should try and incorporate the intangible factors which they also need to clearly understand
(iv)Finances should be availed to provide resources for decision making. Such include the investment in the internet and an updated library.
(v)The possibility of a risk can be dealt with either by ensuring that adequate information for decision making is available and that all stakeholders are consulted.
Kavungya answered the question on April 29, 2021 at 10:00
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