Sound decision making is an integral part of the overall success of any organization. While the leader of the organization has the final say in the overall decision making process, group decision making can generate a more complete solution to a problem by aggregating the resources of several individuals. This offers increased diversity of ideas and opens the door for more potential solutions to a problem to be considered, thereby leading to a greater sense of acceptance of the chosen solution by members of the organization (Robbins & Judge, 2009).
While group decision making can lead to more favorable outcomes, it is not a perfect process. As Robbins & Judge (2009) note, group decision making is often more time consuming than individual decision making, and can open the door to the phenomena of groupthink and groupshift, which can degrade a group’s ability to objectively arrive at a quality solution (p. 302-304).The nominal group technique, the use of electronic meetings, and the inclusion of the idea of covenant in forming groups are several tools available to help mitigate some potential pitfalls of the group decision making process.
Nominal Group Technique The nominal group technique allows individuals come up with their own ideas …show more content…
Fischer (2012) argues that covenant, particularly the ideas of mutual accountability and hesed, will make the formative stages of the group go more smoothly and allow group members to get on the same page so that they can start problem solving more effectively. This idea makes sense for obvious reasons. The more cohesive a group is, the more comfortable they will be around each other, and will therefore be much more effective and efficient when making