Investigating Decision-Making Methods - Essay Example

This paper looks at ways of making the best decisions using the case of Miller as the case study (Lindblom, 2008). It also gives an insight to some of the ways to mitigate issues and or conflict of interest that may arise as one is handling different groups. The case study involves Mr Miller who is new to the school and on his first day is welcomed by two groups. The first group wanted Mr Miller to establish ability grouping at the school as they argued that the slow children took a lot of instructional time leaving only few hours for the gifted children.

The second group however wanted no change and was the view that everything was running well at the school and they wanted no changes at the school. Mr Miller was left with a major problem which was to make sure that the two groups came to an understanding and if not make a decision that would be fair by acting with integrity and in ethical manner. There are different decision making approaches that Mr Miller could employ and try and resolve this problem. First there is the autocratic approach whereby Mr Miller makes a decision without consulting any other party in the school community.

This is cited as one of the fastest forms of decision making as there are no other people involved that may stall the decision making process. Ignoring what others may have to say and assessing the problem and making a decision may not be received well by the community. Being a new school leader it is very important for Mr Miller to have the community backing him up and not to start having his decisions challenged by everyone including his faculty staff. Secondly Mr Miller might use the consultation approach where a leader seeks the advice of the followers and after giving him the ideas, opinions and suggestions the leader makes the decision based on these contributions on his own.

This approach may also be