Decision Making: a Theoretical Review SpringerLink

For example, the ethical corporate action, then, is the one that produces the greatest good and does the least harm for all who are affected—customers, employees, shareholders, the community, frameworks for decision making and the environment. Decision-making is one of the most important life skills people can acquire. And yet, it’s a skill that is rarely taught or systematically developed.

It’s also possible that your team won’t have all of the necessary information on hand in order to benefit from this decision making framework. Some ethicists begin by asking, “How will this action impact everyone affected? Utilitarianism, a results-based approach, says that the ethical action is the one that produces the greatest balance of good over harm for as many stakeholders as possible. It requires an accurate determination of the likelihood of a particular result and its impact.

Annex 1. Search strategy and inclusion criteria

To get around this issue, a leader must listen to the experts while simultaneously welcoming novel thoughts and solutions from others. Executives at one shoe manufacturer did this by opening up the brainstorming process for new shoe styles to the entire company. As a result, a security guard submitted a design for a shoe that became one of their best sellers. Finally, it’s important to remember that best practice is, by definition, past practice. Using best practices is common, and often appropriate, in simple contexts.

Often, making a decision—even a seemingly simple one—can be difficult. And people will go to great lengths—and pay serious sums of money—to avoid having to make a choice. Or limiting your closet choices to black turtlenecks, à la Steve Jobs. Obviously, this framework is useful in situations that ask what sort of person one should be. As a way of making sense of the world, it allows for a wide range of behaviors to be called ethical, as there might be many different types of good character and many paths to developing it.

How can you guard against bias in decision making?

Once people started using YouTube creatively, however, the company could support and augment the emerging patterns of use. YouTube has become a popular platform for expressing political views, for example. The company built on this pattern by sponsoring a debate for presidential hopefuls with video feeds from the site. Second, leaders are susceptible to entrained thinking, a conditioned response that occurs when people are blinded to new ways of thinking by the perspectives they acquired through past experience, training, and success. The group then needs to either argue to convince the ones against it or be persuaded into changing options.

Complicated contexts may contain multiple right answers, and though there is a clear relationship between cause and effect, not everyone can see it. This is the realm of “known unknowns.” Here, leaders must sense, analyze, and respond. When this happens, there are no easy https://www.bookstime.com/articles/what-is-petty-cash answers — but by carefully interrogating these three dimensions, leaders can move forward with confidence that the decisions they make reflect the best possible balance among their different principles. Ultimately, your guts need to have a saying in your decision process.