Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions by Klein - Book Report/Review Example

Title: Critical analysis of a reading Subject: EMG102 Due date: 17/12/ 2010 Introduction The aim of this article is to present a brief description of Klein’ book “Sources of Power: how people make decisions”. The summary will provide a detailed critical analysis of the first three chapters of this book. Important to note, is that this summary will look into the quality of the content used by the author alongside the skills he used to present his context. Finally, the summary will evaluate both the research techniques and depths used to study various topics under discussion in his material. Background information The summary of this text is from the book by Gary Klein “Sources of Power: how people make decisions”. The critical analysis is more concerned with the first three chapters of the book. Considering the style the author has used to write and discuss ideas under various topics, it is evident that he has rich background in psychology and more especially in the study of human behaviour. I am convinced that the author is also an experienced person in counselling people from various professions including the fire-fighters, the paramedics and people from other professions who work under emergency departments. This is because of the language he uses and the way he frames his ideas. The author’s purpose The major purpose for writing this text was to address the idea that there are some professions whereby the workers are exposed into some situations whereby they are expected to make very fast decisions (Klein, 1999, p. 18). The author’s work is intended at the general population. This is because the author has used simple and understandable language which can be understood by anyone (Hartley, 2008, p. 3). Secondly, his research procedural style is more of conversational than formal given the use of possessive pronouns like ‘we and us’ (Sammons, 1999, p. 115). Finally, the work of the author has made use of any technical terms that may be directly related to any single profession (Klein, 1999, p. 21). Plain English Summary of the text In his book “Sources of Power: how people make decisions”, and more in the first three topics, Gary Klein talks about decision making processes by people working under pressured situations. The book in detail talks about how human beings behave when they are faced with situations where they are expected to make quick decisions. According to Klein (1999) “even though so many books have been written, to explain the decision making processes, they have only laid a lot of emphasis on studying into the limitations people face while making decisions and those that make them land on bad decisions.” In his book, Klein chose to extensively study the decision making process by taking into consideration the various capabilities and strengths individuals have that influence their choice of a particular decision (Klein, 1999). In his book, he studied into how different people from various professions such as fire-fighting, paramedics, doctors, military commanders as well as nurses made their fast decisions. In his study, Klein managed to realise how researchers assessed human behaviour towards making decisions in their natural setting (Klein, 1999). He used the natural setting to study how different individuals behaved when they were expected to make certain decisions. The use of natural setting was intended at focusing on how people behaved in different fields. During his study, Klein found that in most instances people who were working in pressured environments were able to make brilliant decisions during emergencies as opposed to when they had enough time to consider and evaluate all decision options that were available. When studying the fire-fighters, the author found that individuals while making decisions, they used to draw their power from their general intuition, mental activation as well as from storytelling (Klein, 1999). In other words, in many occasions the fire-fighters did not use their logical thinking and analysis of all options based on the available facts. While studying the process of making decisions by the fire-fighters, he found that people used to draw their power from their own intuition, mental activation as well as from storytelling. This means that the decision making was not based on logical thinking and analysis of various options based on the available facts. He also added that past experience and external influence also played a very vital role in determining how decisions were made in highly pressured situations (Klein, 1999). To add to his work, Klein has also highlighted in his book how he was approached in the 1980s by the military men to go and study how decisions were being made by the military commanders. This is because the military leaders were convinced that their policies were not good since the turnover rates within the military were very high (Klein, 1999). However, in highlighting the challenges to his study, he argued that researchers did not have a chance to view fire reports and observe real emergency situations. Together with others, Klein managed to study at what points when it can be said that human beings are pressured and what point the available options should be considered and if there is time or not. Finally, the author comments that highly pressured people are able to come up with good decisions based on their experience (Klein, 1999). Critical analysis Author’s individual belief Looking at the author’s work with consideration to individual belief and judgment, it can be argued that his study was based on the belief that people who had longer experience stood a better chance of making good decisions at all times. The foundation of this judgment is from his professional experience from the psychology field and his long term study on human behaviours. Given his long-term experience in observing and studying human behavior, he was able to conceptualize that people who had longer experience in particular field were able to make informed decisions even when they were operating under pressured situations. Missed or ignored Looking at the work that has been done by Klein it can be argued that he has missed quantitative data to support his work. This is because his work is only based on theories and therefore and therefore the quantitative part of it has been left out. Even though the author has talked about different studies, he has lacked the quantitative data to support his presentation. In research, statistical data is considered to be a very important tool that can be used to determine the validity and relevance of the author’s arguments and judgments (Ostle & Malone, 1988, p. 3). Biases Given that the author of this work is a psychologist, it can be clearly seen from the text that his work has had some biases. Much of his life has been dedicated to researching on decision-making processes and he has attempted to bring in some ideas from his previous work into this work. His work has tended to follow the past pattern used in the previous researches. I am convinced beyond doubt that the author of this book has been biased based on his long-term experience in studying decision making processes by different individuals for many years. Individual bias is considered as one of the main factors that may influence the outcome of a given study (Coon & Mitterer, p. 36). This is because it may influence the way one interviews the respondents something may lead to biased answers. Even though it may be argued that it was not the author intention to be biased, it is evident that some of the patterns in this study are apparent from the previous studies. However, the researcher has taken a step further to reduce the ultimate effect of the biases in the current study. This was done by going over different processes repeatedly to make sure that every course of action was considered and the responses considered accordingly. In order to minimize the effect of biasness, the researcher also went further to tape-record his engagements with the respondents. This strategy was used to ensure that enough time was created to review the respondents’ answers and at the same create an opportunity for the core-researchers to listen to the interviews and give their opinions (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010, p. 751). Evidence The author’s work has been based on the actual researches Klein and his colleagues conducted. This is the best practice for doing research. The author has cited various studies that conducted in order to asses various trends used in decision making processes. For example the author’s studies have observed the firefighters, doctors, rescue employees as well as soldiers and other people who work in highly pressured situations and the processes of making decisions (Sacket, 1996, p. 71). The author’s work has been built on real life observations. This can be clearly demonstrated from the researcher’s work that has not referred any material for his literature (Olafson, 2001, p. 50). The data collected from different studies was satisfactory in generating comprehensive arguments for a sound research. While conducting the research different evidenced could be interpreted differently as the literature review (Reynolds, 2003, p. 168). While doing this research there is evidence for referring other studies conducted by the researcher including those from mental health processes (Reynolds, 2003, p. 168). Assumptions In his work, the author has made different assumptions. Some of the assumptions are clearly outlined in the text while the others have been implied from the article. First, all human beings deployed in highly pressured environments end up having difficulties in making decisions. Second, the people who had the authority to make decisions always settled in the first option without considering the other options that are available. These kinds of assumptions and many others were used by the researcher to build the foundation for his research in order to prove or disapprove them (Burns & Grove, 2003, p. 41). Counter-arguments After the author had completed his research he was able to drop some of his believes based on the new findings. First, the belief that novices used to rush for the first options during decision making process was dropped. This is because the author was able to find out that only experienced practitioners who were able to make quick decisions while the novices could not only do also after deliberating on various options. Observing the scenario where the oil tanker had exploded, the researcher disapproved his previous belief that experience could be used to make quick decisions. This is after realizing that to some level experience alone may not be sufficient. In his work he came to conclude to that logical thinking is the best option to a situation where experience cannot assist. Opinion Given that the researcher was able to support his arguments with studies, it can therefore be said that the text has managed to fulfill its objectives. The researcher’s agenda was to carry out a study on how different people making decisions in pressured situation and their source of power (Hammersley, 2004, p. 154). By conducting actual observations, the researcher was able to achieve these goals. Working together with other researchers, Klein was able to document how individuals made certain decisions and the various factors that impacted on their decision-making processes (Wood & Kerr, 2010, p. 2002). However, by referring to the previous studies conducted by the researcher, he was not able to be very effective like it ought to have been. This is because the researcher used his past studies to approve or disapprove some of his arguments (Graddol & Maybin, 1994, p. 5). In addition, the researcher did not make use of statistical data to support his discussions and make them as conclusive as possible. Further, the researcher did not make of literature from the other researchers and peers to build on his arguments and give good results (Weiner & Craighead, 2010, p. 89). However, important to note is that, the researcher was able to fulfill his objective since he managed to observe and evaluate how human beings made naturalistic decisions in the real-time decision making processes. Since the study was conducted outside the safety environment which confines with the laboratory context it was able to be more realistic, objective and reliable (Lewis-Beck, Bryman, & Liao, 2004, p. 714). Reading this article to me was very enjoyable because it created an opportunity for me to learn on how people make decisions in a more realistic environment. Comparing this book with the other books I have read, I found that this book managed to demonstrate actual life situations as opposed to other books which only explained the concept in general terms. This book has also helped me think of possible answers to different problems. Because the author of this book had used practical situations, I found it to be very useful in my life. After reading this book one may realize making emergency decisions should not be a fearful undertaking (Morgan, 1997, p. 8). This is because it has built my courage especially when making critical decisions. Finally, this article was like an assurance to me that lack of experience should not be the limiting factor to making decisions in highly pressured situations. Reference Burns, N. & Grove, S. (2003) Understanding nursing research, Philadelphia: Saunders Elsevier Coon, D. & Mitterer, J. (2008) Introduction to Psychology: Gateways to Mind and Behavior, California: Cengage Learning Graddol, D. & Maybin, J. (1994) Researching language and literacy in social context: a reader, Philadelphia: Multilingual Matters Hammersley, M. (2004) The Dilemma of Qualitative Method: Herbert Blumer and the Chicago Tradition, New York: Routledge Hartley, J. (2008) Academic writing and publishing: a practical guide, New York: Routledge Klein, G. (1999) Sources of power: how people make decisions, Massachusetts: MIT Press Lewis-Beck, M., Bryman, A., & Liao, F. (2004) The Sage encyclopedia of social science research methods, Volume 1, California: Sage Publications Morgan, D. (1997) Focus groups as qualitative research, California: Sage Publications Olafson, F. (2001) Naturalism and the human condition: against scientism, New York: Routledge Ostle, B. & Malone, L. (1988) Statistics in research: basic concepts and techniques for research workers, Iowa: Iowa State University Press Reynolds, J. (2003) The managing care reader, New York: Routledge Sackett, D., Rosenberg, W., Gray, J., Haynes, R., & Richardson, W. (1996) Evidence based medicine: what it is and what it isn't, British Medical Journal, volume 312, p. 71 Sammon, M. (1999) The Internet writer's handbook, California: Allyn & Bacon Tashakkori, A. & Teddlie, C. (2008) Sage Handbook of Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Research, California: Sage Publications Weiner, I. & Craighead, E. (2004) The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology, Volume 1, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Wood, M. & Kerr, J. (2010) Basic Steps in Planning Nursing Research: From Question to Proposal, Massachusetts: Jones & Bartlett Read More