CHAPTER CHAPTER

6
Decision-Making Processes
Stewart L. Tubbs
McGraw-Hill 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 2

Decision-Making Processes

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Improving Creativity Reflective Thinking Process The Kepner-Tregoe Approach The Fishbone Technique Brainstorming Six Thinking Hats Incrementation Mixed Scanning Tacit Bargaining Review of the Systems Approach
2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 3

Improving Creativity
Creative thinking is often characterized as thinking outside the box. Creativity can be divided into two phases of thinking:
Divergent thinking Convergent thinking

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 4

Improving Creativity
Gibson and Hodgetts (1986) identify four different kinds of creativity that may be applied to group problem solving.
Innovation Synthesis Extension Duplication

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 5

Improving Creativity
Left- and Right-Brain Functions

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 6

Reflective Thinking Process

The reflective thinking sequence first proposed by John Dewey (1910) emphasizes the left-brain functions.
Define problem. Analyze causes. Identify criteria. Generate solutions.

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 7

The Kepner-Tregoe Approach

The Kepner-Tregoe approach is very effective across industries, countries, and cultures. Analytic Trouble Shooting (ATS) focuses mostly on problem solving through two key steps: identification of root causes action steps
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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 8

The Kepner-Tregoe Approach

The most important contribution seems to be the way in which a group works through the criteria phase.
There are certain required elements and other desired element to any solution, called musts and wants by Kepner and Tregoe.

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 9

The Kepner-Tregoe Approach

SSC Ratings for Competing States

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Source: From Mike Magner. Geology Blamed for States Loss of Atom 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Smasher, Ann Arbor News, 11 November 1988, pp. A1, A4.

Slide 10

The Fishbone Technique

The Fishbone Technique is so called because its outline resembles the skeleton of a fish.
It helps to identify graphically the underlying causes of a problem.

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 11

Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a lateral thinking process. Brainstorming encourages open and random thinking and communications

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 12

Brainstorming
Brainstorming emphasizes right-brain activity.
Rules for brainstorming:
Put judgment and evaluation aside temporarily. Turn imagination loose, and start offering the results. Think of as many ideas as you can. Seek combination and improvement. Record all ideas in full view. Evaluate at a later session.

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 13

Brainstorming
The Fishbone Technique

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 14

Brainstorming
Alternative Brainstorming Techniques Random Input Reframing Professions approach Provocation

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 15

Brainstorming
Alternative Brainstorming Techniques SCAMPER system
S=substitute C=combine A=adapt M=modify P=put to another use E=eliminate R=reverse

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 16

Six Thinking Hats

Six thinking hats is an intuitive way to keep your thoughts focused while problem solving.
White hatemotionally neutral. Red hatemotions, gut instincts, intuition, and feelings. Black hatrepresents careful and analytical thinking. Yellow hatrepresents sunny, optimistic, and positive thinking. Green hatrepresents creativity, new ideas, alternatives, and possibilities. Blue hatrepresents coordination, control, and the discipline to know when to use which hat.
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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 17

Incrementalism
Braybrooke and Lindblom (1963) argue that numerous decisions concerning governmental policies are arrived at partially as a result of adapting to political pressure rather than as a result of rational analysis.

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 18

Incrementalism
The term incrementalism refers to the process of making decisions that result in change.
Quadrant 1High understanding/large change Quadrant 2High understanding/incremental change Quadrant 3Low understanding/incremental change Quadrant 4Low understanding/large change
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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 19

Incrementation
Model of Decision-Making

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Source: Reprinted with permission of the Free Press, a Division of Macmillan, Inc., from David Braybrooke and 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Charles C. Lindbloom. A Strategy of Decision, copyright 1963 by The Free Press of Glencoe.

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Mixed Scanning
Etzioni (1968) offers a decision-making strategy that is a combination of reflective thinking and incrementalism.
The ability to maintain a balance between attention to the general and attention to the specific appears to be a major factor in successful problem solving.

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 21

Tacit Bargaining
Murnighan (1992) advanced a strategy referred to as tacit bargaining or bargaining in which communication is incomplete or impossible.
People can cooperate fairly successfully in some problem-solving situations if it is to their advantage to do so.
Mixed-motive situationswhen there is simultaneous pressure to cooperate and to compete imply communication procedures that are distinctly different from those in other problem-solving situations.
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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 22

Tacit Bargaining
Virtual decision-making
The decision-making process in the virtual process is a thoughtful and time-consuming process. Online tools that help groups make decisions are called decision support systems (DSS).

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 23

Review of the Systems Approach

The decision-making process in most groups can be improved. The systems principle of equifinality is that several alternative methods may be used to reach the solution to the groups problem. The appropriateness of any method will depend on the demands of the specific situation.

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2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.

Slide 24

Review of the Systems Approach

The rational problem-solving methods work well in most cases but seem particularly suited to an autonomous group trying to satisfy its own needs while being allowed to do so by a democratic leader. Tacit bargaining seems to be primarily appropriate in mixed-motive situations. The demands of the situation play a great part in suggesting which problem-solving strategy we want to employ.
McGraw-Hill
2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.