The smart way of group decision making: Seeking for the practicability in the organization

Abstract

Through our lives, we experience action “choose and decide” all the time both in daily lives as an individual and in some organizations as a group. Organizations for instance societies, schools and workplaces give us opportunities to experience groups’ choose and decide. Therefore, it is necessary to learn not only how to make own decisions but also how to make group decisions. This study focuses on group decision making. It seeks for particularly the effectiveness of group decision making with ideal conditions where it could be applied in organizations. In order to find out such group decision making, there are two objectives: the first objective is to study the ideal conditions of group decision making and the second is to study what are the suitable places to apply group decision making. They are the fundamental assignments for this study.

Two research tasks help to achieve the two objectives. The first task is to study group decision making deeply: group decision making is studied from various points of view, group decision making and individual decision making are compared, the positive and negative elements of group decision making are examined, and the relationship between group decision making and strategic decision making are analyzed. The second task is to find the ideal conditions of group decision making which in this study will be called the smart way of group decision making. This task helps to understand the Top Management Team (TMT) model and to find out the ideal conditions through studying organizational styles and cultures.

In this study, references, which include books and scientific articles, help to suggest the ideal model of group decision making. I insist that in case of formal situations, group decision making with group harmony and homogeneity would have a positive effect for organizations’ efficiency. In addition, I can say that group decision making can be applied both in collectivistic cultures and individualistic cultures. I believe that the smart way of group decision making which I suggested in this study can help to improve the decision making effectiveness in organizations.