3 Models Of Decision

Making

Conceptualization of
decision making
premises

Constraints on rational
decision making

Sources of theory,
insights, and evidence

Bureaucratic Politics

Group Dynamics

- Decision making as the

result of bargaining
within bureaucratic
organizations
- Central Organizational
values are imperfectly
internalized
- Organizational behavior
is political behavior
- Structure and SOPs
affect substance and
quality of decisions
- Imperfect information,
resulting from
centralization,
hierarchy, and
specialization
- Organizational inertia
- Conflict between
individual and
organizational utilities
- Bureaucratic politics
and bargaining
dominate decision
making and
implementation of
decisions

- Decision making as the

product of group
interaction
- Most decisions are
made by small elite
groups
- Group is different than
the sum of its members
- Group dynamics affect
substance and quality of
decisions

- Organization theory
- Sociology of
bureaucracies
- Bureacratic politics

Individual Decision
Making
- Decision making as the
result of individual
choice
- Importance of
subjective appraisal
(definition of the
situation) and cognative
processes (information
processing, etc.)

- Groups may be more

- Cognitive limits on
effective for some tasks,
rationality
less for others
- Information processing
- Pressures for conformity
distorted by cognitive
- Risk-taking propensity
constituency dynamics
of groups
(unmotivated biases)
(controversial)
- Systematic and
- Quality of leadership
motivated biases in
Groupthink
causal analysis
- Individual differences in
abilities related to
decision making (e.g.,
problem-solving ability,
tolerance of ambiguity,
defensiveness and
anxiety, information
seeking, etc.)
- Social psychology
- Cognitive dissonance
- Sociology of small
- Cognitive psychology
groups
- Dynamic psychology