The thought process of selecting a logical choice from the available options. When trying to make a good decision, a person must weight the’ positives and negatives of each option, and consider all the alternatives. For effective decision making, a person must be able to forecast the outcome of each option as well and based on all these items, determine which option is the best for that particular situation.
Choosing the Group Decision Making method
In executing the process, it will be necessary to determine the method to be used to combine individual responses and generate specific outcomes. Group decision-making methods generally fall into these major approaches:
- Consultation with a single decision maker: The decision group is consulted for information
and advice but one person consolidates and makes the final choice. - Group averaging: The decision is derived from some form of averaging of independent individual selections.
- Voting: A selection is made based on achieving an agreed portion of votes from the Multiple rules exist that include the majority, super majority (60%, two-thirds), or highest number of votes (winner takes all), and often rules can consider establishing minimum participation for validity.
- Consensus: A majority agrees and no one objects.
- Unanimous: All must agree.
There is an amazing amount of research devoted to understanding these various methods, and the group decision-making process will be more efficient when specific methods are selected during decision planning using the participation level choice described above.
