Stewart L. Tubbs McGraw-Hill© 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. 6 C H A P T E R Decision-Making Processes

McGraw-Hill © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Slide 2 Decision-Making Processes 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

McGraw-Hill © 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

McGraw-Hill © 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

McGraw-Hill © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Slide 5 Improving Creativity Left- and Right-Brain Functions

McGraw-Hill © 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.

McGraw-Hill © 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

McGraw-Hill © 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.

McGraw-Hill © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Slide 9 The Kepner-Tregoe Approach SSC Ratings for Competing States Source: From Mike Magner. “Geology Blamed for State’s Loss of Atom Smasher,” Ann Arbor News, 11 November 1988, pp. A1, A4.

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

McGraw-Hill © 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

McGraw-Hill © 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.

McGraw-Hill © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Slide 13 Brainstorming The Fishbone Technique

McGraw-Hill © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Slide 14 Brainstorming Alternative Brainstorming Techniques –Random Input Reframing Professions approach Provocation

McGraw-Hill © 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

McGraw-Hill © 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 hat—emotionally neutral. –Red hat—emotions, gut instincts, intuition, and feelings. –Black hat—represents careful and analytical thinking. –Yellow hat—represents sunny, optimistic, and positive thinking. –Green hat—represents creativity, new ideas, alternatives, and possibilities. –Blue hat—represents coordination, control, and the discipline to know when to use which hat.

McGraw-Hill © 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.

McGraw-Hill © 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 1—High understanding/large change –Quadrant 2—High understanding/incremental change –Quadrant 3—Low understanding/incremental change –Quadrant 4—Low understanding/large change

McGraw-Hill © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Slide 19 Incrementation Model of Decision-Making Source: Reprinted with permission of the Free Press, a Division of Macmillan, Inc., from David Braybrooke and Charles C. Lindbloom. A Strategy of Decision, copyright © 1963 by The Free Press of Glencoe.

McGraw-Hill © 2007 The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Slide 20 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.

McGraw-Hill © 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 situations—when there is simultaneous pressure to cooperate and to compete– imply communication procedures that are distinctly different from those in other problem-solving situations.

McGraw-Hill © 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).

McGraw-Hill © 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 group’s problem. The appropriateness of any method will depend on the demands of the specific situation.

McGraw-Hill © 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.