Decision-Making Processes in the Workplace
The article mentions Daniel Kahneman without explaining much about him. We will get to know him much better in the next section when we start to think about thinking.
Sometimes the most well-structured decision-making processes go awry, not because
of the process itself, but because of the participants or the environment. This article shows us what can go wrong and how to get things back on track to meet
your TOR deliverables.
The article discusses obstacles to improved decision-making, including "cognitive limitations, heuristics and biases and individual inclinations". Heuristics are mental shortcuts individuals use to solve problems. These have great use, for instance, telling humans to run when they see a saber-toothed tiger without thinking too much about the decision. The choice of which cat to adopt from a shelter today may require less use of heuristics and more cognitive exercise.
Results
Descriptive Statistics
Table 1 shows the means, standard deviations, correlations, and the internal consistency indexes of the scales. All scales present acceptable reliability indexes. Both decision making measures showed not to be correlated, confirming an interdependence in measuring two distinct decision-making competences. In relation to socio-demographic variables, DMCy shows positive correlations with length in service and job position (r = 0.21, p < 0.01); DEM presents a positive correlation with the number of supervised staff (r = 0.20, p < 0.01). Consistent with our hypotheses, we found positive correlations between DMCy and in-role performance, and between DEM scores and extra-role performance on the other hand, partially confirming hypotheses H1a and H2a. DEM in addition shows a positive correlation with some job resources (feedback = 0.19, p ;< 0.05; professional development = 0.33, p < 0.01), instead no relationship between DMCy and job demands emerged. Both decision-making measures revealed negative correlations with exhaustion (DEM = -0.20, p < 0.05; DMCy = -0.27, p < 0.01) partially confirming H3a and H4a. Next analyses will test the direction of such relationships in order to fully confirm hypotheses.
TABLE 1. Means, standard deviations (SD), internal consistencies (on the diagonal) and correlations among socio-demographics and study's variables.