Group Decision Making and Negotiation among Agents - Essay Example

MANAGEMENT Outline the distinctive properties of group decision-making and negotiation. Compare and contrast the conditions under which these two coordination mechanisms can govern interdependences among agents effectively and efficiently. Your name …………………. Course Name and Number …………….. Date of submission …………. Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 Group Decision Making 3 Distinctive Properties of group Decision Making 3 1- Brainstorming: 4 2- Nominal Group Technique: 4 3- Electronic meeting and Delphi method: 5 Conditions under which two coordination mechanisms govern interdependencies 6 Complex tasks: 7 Team: 7 Technology 7 Organization 8 Conclusion 8 References 9 Introduction In management perspective, problem solving and decision making are the most essential components of all managerial activities throughout their ongoing management tasks. Decision making is related to defining problems and selecting a best course of actions among alternatives to solve problem that is already occurred or is anticipated. Since employees’ acceptance of a particular decision has greater significance in organizational setting, it is usually imperative for the management to include group of employees in decision making process. This essay outlines distinctive techniques of group decision making and negotiation. It compares and contrasts conditions where the group decision making properties govern independences among the agents. Group Decision Making Group decision making is a process by which members in a group interact and collaborate to reach a collective decision. Since no single individual is held accountable for any bad decision, group decision making produces a diffusion of responsibility among group members. It also generates more complete information and knowledge (Lunenburg and Ornstein, 2007, p. 169). It offers increased diversified views and greater acceptance of solutions among people who are concerned about the decision. Distinctive Properties of group Decision Making Different forms of group decision making occur in interacting groups in which members of a group interact face to face and they communicate verbally and non-verbally to reach a final decision. Brainstorming, Nominal group and Delphi are the major three properties of group decision making. 1- Brainstorming: Brainstorming, that has been first developed by Alex Osborn fifty years ago (Lunenburg and Ornstein, 2007, p. 169) is a method for creatively encouraging alternatives while withholding criticism for solving a specific problem. It starts by group leader’s problem statement in a way that all the members can understand the basic problem and think freely about various alternatives that they can put forward for solving the issue (Robbins and Judge, 2011, p. 299). Brainstorming method encourages criticism because it brings creativity. Members included in the group are motivated to bring up with varying ideas for solving the problem by reducing critical and judgmental reactions to ideas. Brainstorming doesn’t allow evaluating the alternatives because evaluation should come later and criticism of others’ ideas to be avoided. It encourages freewheeling as it is important not to consider other’s ideas as outlandish, as many as ideas possible from members, and encourage piggybacking by allowing all the group members to combine, embellish and improve on ideas that are already given by the members (Lunenburg and Ornstein, 2007, p. 170). 2- Nominal Group Technique: In Nominal Group Technique, interpersonal communication during the decision making process is restricted. As in brainstorming method, members to the group are encouraged to bring varying ideas to develop a solution to the problem, but unlike brainstorming, it is concerned with both the generation of ideas and evaluation of these ideas. Nominal group technique is more useful and highly effective when the issue that the management needs to take decision for or to solve is more critical in nature and is complex in practical aspects. As members are encourages to create certain ideas when they are in a mode of silently generating ideas, members’ interference is avoided and this in turn adds seriousness to the decision making process. Nominal group technique, as core to its rules, allows certain time for generating ideas to solve the problem that may be posted on a flip chart in a room. The leader then facilitates round-robin recording ideas as he may walk around the room and record each idea on the flip chart. Nominal group technique encourages discussion of each idea that is presented in the flip chart. Each members of the group is motivated to vote on item according to his importance and this method finally encourages additional discussions on ideas and come to final voting to reach the final solution point (Lunenburg and Ornstein, 2007, p. 171) 3- Electronic meeting and Delphi method: One of the recent trends in group decision making technique is electronic meeting in which computer technology is used for making face to face arrangement among the members and arranges interaction among them. Delphi method doesn’t depend on direct face to face interaction, but rather, members inputs are solicited through mails or emails allowing polling of large numbers of experts and constituencies. In electronic and Delphi method of group decision making, members put their responses in to their computers or send through mail responses or send their votes through electronic or other methods. As Robbins and Judge (2011, p. 300) noted, electronic meeting method allows people to be honest without penalty. An added advantage is that it forms to be a conference as many members together at a time can interact and talk rather than one waiting for the other to finish his talk. This method therefore doesn’t require more time as is required in other methods. Conditions under which two coordination mechanisms govern interdependencies No matter which specific technique of group decision making is used, there is truly information or knowledge flow among the members of the group. Information and knowledge are either explicit or implicit. While members in a group interact through groupthink or through different methods of decision making such as brainstorming, nominal group technique or Delphi method, they regulate action and information flow. Coordination is a group decision making of the task-dependant management of interdependencies among members or resources by regulating action and information flow (Kolbe and Boos, 2009, p. 7). In group decision making or in most of the organizational teamwork processes, member dependencies become more complex and thus increase the need for coordination. Either explicit or implicit coordination mechanism will be used for managing these dependencies. Explicit coordination is used when the team uses task programming through schedules or plans or by communicating through writing of formal or informal ways. These explicit mechanisms are purposefully used for coordination. Team may also use implicit coordination through team cognition or through knowledge share among the members. There is no purposeful trying of coordination in implicit coordination (Espinosa, Lerch and Kraut, p. 107). Coordination intention will be recognized by the group members in an explicit coordination but not in implicit coordination mechanism. Under certain conditions, both explicit and implicit coordination mechanisms govern interdependencies among the agents. These conditions are compared and contrasted below: Complex tasks: Complex tasks govern more interdependencies among the agents. Complex tasks such as management decisions regarding business strategies or large scale software development purpose may require greater interdependencies among the agents (Espinosa, Lerch and Kraut, p. 117). In most complex tasks, members of the group may possess differentiated knowledge and each member may require getting in to other’s knowledge to recognize the problem or find out alternative ideas for solution or to finalize on the final solution etc. Team cognition will be effective only if the team can manage important task dependencies. Even though the group is well coordinated, it may still perform poor since other performance indicators are weak. For example, a software team with members whose software knowledge is relatively weak is more likely to produce poor quality software decision. Team: Type of team and members involved in the team is another important factor that determines the level of interdependency among the members. Knowledge, skill, experience, discretion and wisdom of the members are thus important elements that influence the level of interdependency. In both explicit and implicit mechanisms of coordination, the team whose members consist a combination of skilled and unskilled or experienced and non-experienced, for instance, will govern more interdependencies effectively and efficiently. Technology Interdependency of agents in a team will be affected by communication and technologies. Espinosa, Lerch and Kraut, (p. 122) stressed that information technology affects interdependencies among agents. It also affects information flow and workflow among collaborators. For example, a smaller software project may not require configuration management system which in turn creates member dependencies as and when different software experts need to work on same part of software project. But contrary, large scale software project may reduce member dependencies since multiple developers work on same part of the software. Organization Team’s member interaction and member interdependency is largely affected by organizational factors such as organizational culture, organizational structure and standard. These factors certainly affect the way an organization uses technology and treat its people and therefore it affects the interdependencies of the team members. In a nutshell, complex tasks govern greater interdependency than in the case of team, organization and technology. Conclusion This essay has addressed the management concepts of group decision making process and its major properties. Brainstorming, nominal group and Delphi method are some of the most important techniques of group decision making process. This essay has compared and contrasted four conditions in which explicit and implicit coordination mechanisms govern more interdependencies among the agents effectively. References Espinosa, J.A, Lerch, F.J and Kraut, R.E, nd, Explicit versus implicit coordination mechanisms and task dependencies: 3ne size does not fit all, National Science Foundation, Retrieved from EBSCO database Kolbe, M and Boos, M, 2009, Facilitating Group Decision-Making: Facilitators Subjective Theories on Group Coordination, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, Retrieved from EBSCO database Lunenburg, F.C and Ornstein, A.C, 2007, Educational Administration: Concepts and Practices, Volume 13, Fifth edition, Cengage Learning Robbins, S.P and Judge, T.A, 2011, Organizational Behavior, Fourteenth Edition, Prentice Hall, Pearson Education, Inc Read More