Учебное пособие: English in business
d) Behavioural decision makers. These individuals have a strong people orientation. They tend to communicate easily, using simple and understandable messages(with low cognitive complexity). They consult with others, are open to suggestions and happy to compromise. They prefer a looser sense of leadership control. "I prefer everyone to "own" the decisions that are mine".
4 Finding your way
As we have seen, decision making is a process involving data collection and rigorous analysis. But it is also a psychological process involving human emotions and personal bias. The challenge is to develop your own approach to decision making so that you can make the most of your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.
When working internationally in teams with different mindsets and priorities, it is essential that you can incorporate these diverse perspectives into the decision making process. In this way, you will be able to increase both creativity and the team's commitment to decisions.
3 Answer the questions:
What makes decision making so important today?
What definition of decision making can you suggest?
What affects decision making?
What are key steps in decision making?
What is the most essential for each step?
4 Test your decision making
Look at the questions below and note down your options. Then see page .... for comments. Decision 1: A normal coin is tossed ten times and lands on heads each time. You have $1,000 to place on the next choice. Do you choose heads or tails?
Decision 2: Which is more likely: to be killed by a shark, or by parts falling from an aircraft in flight?
Decision 3: What length would a perfectly regular cube-shaped tank have to be to hold all the blood of five billion people?
Decision 4: Think about the consequences of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986. On a scale of 1 (not at all) to 100 (totally), how strong would you support the building of a nuclear reactor close to your home?
5 Test your decision making: comments
There are various reasons why people make bad decisions. Here are a number of them, which we discuss in relation to the four decisions that you were asked to make on page . . . We use poor criteria. When faced with complex decisions, people often rely on their own experiences. But these may not be good criteria. In the first decision, most people intuitively choose tails, even though the probability of heads is still 50 per cent. In the second question,the correct answer is "falling aircraft parts", but most people answer "shark attack" because of
their experience of watching films or television programmes.
We use wrong information. The third question is often answered poorly as a result of people
giving false importance to what they see as significant data. Many people estimate that the tank
must be several kilometers long because of the large number of people. In fact, the answer is
"only" just over 260 meters.
We are not objective. The fourth question is usually answered on the basis of personal values
and bias, rather than on objective criteria ("I need more information about the risks")
6 Ask yourself.
1What kind of decision maker are your?
3 Do you like to be the first to act or are you more cautious?
4Are you prepared to take risks or do you delay decisions until you are sure of the outcome? 5 How would you describe the decision-making culture where you work/study?
6 To what extent do you fit into the culture?