Answer to Question #17209 in Management for rebecca

Question

compare and contrast individual and group decision-making. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Are there certain decisions that are better suited to individual decision-making? What bounded awareness issues are found in individual versus group decision-makin

Answer 1

Group decision-making has several disadvantages:
- discouraging creativity;
- ignoring alternative variants;
- leading to irrational actions and decisions;
- distorting reality;
- existing under the pressure that is caused by the outside factors;
- generalizing opinions and experience.

The advantages of the group decision-making are:
- combining the strengths of each member in group;
- having a set of different skills that taking part in the process of decision making;
- imbibing a sense of spirit of the team amongst members.

Individual decision-making has some advantages:
- ability to make immediate decision and act immediately;
- responsibility of the taken decision is on the person;
- efficiency in the time use.

Its disadvantages are:
- seeing the perspective from the one side;
- no chance to use someone’s advice or experience;
- lack of creative solutions.

Decisions should be made by individual when it is the solution that needs using intuition. The reason is that involves only one person (decision-maker). Groupthink is the result of collective pressure. It discourages responsibility of the individuality. Talking about bounded awareness issues, groups are usually hinder sharing with the information. Group might discuss information, but widely known information is often conveyed (not the information, which is known by each member). In the individual decision-making the information that is unexpected is extremely easy to miss. Sometimes it is known, while not acted upon.