Topic 2- Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of group decision making in organisations

Introduction 

          In an organisation, decision making is essentially a process for selecting from a range of options. The output of each decision-making procedure generates an outcome that may be an initiative, an approval, or a recommendation. Increasing productivity in decision-making is also a major part of maximizing our workplace effectiveness. Decisions are taken in the organisation's best interest. While small organisations include all types of management, multinational organizations are primarily dependent on a professionally qualified team of experts to make all kinds of decisions (Curseu et al., 2016). Discussions and meetings are two key instruments that support decisions and finally carry them out. According to Barends and Rousseau (2018), most decision-making conversations presume that only senior managers decide things and that the decisions of top management counts and this is completely a critical assumption made in many organisations by most administrators. This assessment aims at highlighting the advantages and disadvantages of group decision making in an organization by using reflection and literature. 

          As an employee in an organisation, rather than taking my own decision to accomplish my business priorities and goals, I would greatly prefer to make a collective decision. I fully identify with Peter Drucker's argument that the decision-making of top management is the mistake most companies make (Kelman et al., 2017). I believe, as per my viewpoint, that all decisions must be delegated to groups of employees because all the representatives have the expertise and knowledge they need to make the correct decision. I would strongly recommend my team to be efficient and work as leaders and help their team in decision-making and contribute to positive decision outcomes. As an efficient and appropriate decision-maker, facilitating my team engagement is an adequate way to maximise production capacity and it offers employees an ability to embrace their viewpoints and fruitful ideas (Brunsson & Brunsson, 2017).

          This is because two or more individuals are often included in group decisions, are engaged, which results in decisions which are the responsibility of the group rather than any individual member. In addition to the above, I firmly agree that group decision-making is susceptible to external factors, peer influences, interpersonal relationships that can provide benefits as well as drawbacks in decision-making outcomes. Furthermore, group decision-making could be different as the hands-on and sometimes the participation of employees in today's age is freely comparable (Treffers et al., 2020). Organizations will achieve a strategic advantage by group decision-making and I can achieve a competitive advantage as an effective decision-maker for my organisations.

           As per studies, there are many advantages and disadvantages of group decision making. Group decision-making advantages include efficiency, skill enhancement, collective information, skilful opinions and multiplicity of the ideas (Liu, 2017). The advantages are more as compared to the disadvantages as the group decision making ensures participation of all levels of management and aims at achieving the most suitable option for the company.  

The first advantage of includes collective information and ideas. As an employee, I agree that a group decision making with the staff is best suited as all the mutual information will be obtained and there will be more suggestions to make a successful decision (Morente et al., 2017). Therefore, in making any sound decision in an organisation, collective decisions are important. I also believe that as an employee, senior manager or supervisor, I may not be able to achieve the right decisions because of lack of experience but my engagement in the decision making would improve my knowledge and I will gain an understanding of the current and future organizational needs (Morenteet al., 2017). 

           Further, the next advantage of group decision making is the multiplicity of views. It is strongly agreed that, in comparison to an independent point of view, a group consistently has the advantage of wide-ranging perspectives and opinions (Wu et al., 2019). As a result, a company often has more than one person or entity, with each member having their point of view, thoughts and perspectives on all the issues that have been posed. Through group decision-making, the vast array of perspectives could help organisations succeed and this could be done by the different approaches to addressing the challenges presented by an organisation. A group agreement aims to encompass and performing action maximises, offering a deeper picture of decision-making (Asuquo et al., 2019). Next advantage of group decision making is bigger appropriateness. As an employee of an organisation, I assume that in contrast to an individual employee, the views expressed by a group have more recognition. This is because the options are not obligatory, but are part of a broader agreement. It is to be thought that a collective decision is naturally supposed to be more self-governing, and it can be clear that an individual's preference is autocratic (Liu et al., 2019).

           Moreover, group decision making also ensures skilful opinions. Skilful views are encouraged by group decision-making wherein the views differ from each other. This will be deeply supported by me as the employee of the company so I will come up with lots of suggestions through the skilful thoughts, repercussions of the decision that I made. In addition, viewpoints and suggestions can either be acquired from group members or any outside experience can be called in to form a different group to make a decision-making decision (Rajesh, 2020). In addition to this, the degree of contribution is the major advantage of group decision making. Ultimately, attributable to the participation of all employees, the degree of contributions received from the group would continue to resolve the problem. If I didn't encourage my team to engage in the decision-making process, this might let them feel insulted in which can give rise to another issue? I will favour collective decision making to mitigate the conflict to improve an organisation to promote decision-making as an employee to reduce their conflict. Also, the sixth advantage that is inspiring people’s participation will be that group decision-making typically encourages the inspirations of the members through which it offers opportunities for individuals to present their thoughts, ideas and contributions (Wright, 2018). Dynamically, when they become part of the policymaking, it motivates individuals to take advantage. 

 Everything that has advantages also has some disadvantages which somewhere affect its use. In terms of group decision making there are associated with a number of disadvantages. There are also disadvantages that may be addressed by group decision-making, and the disadvantages that could occur by group decision-making are described as following. The first disadvantage is time-consuming. Because a collective decision involves multiple suggestions and viewpoints from personalities, it can take time to determine the decisions. By getting the participant to get organised, plan and coordinate their meetings, identify and clarify to them the purpose of a meeting and the aims, and success, the time taking could lag to a longer time (Labella et al., 2018).

Next disadvantage is lack of obligation in a group decision making. The transition of the duty to the other member of a team is often difficult to fix. In an organisation, for example, it is also important to correct compliance before an issue can be addressed. There is, however, a failure of group decision-making obligations. As even if the decision is collective it is merely based on the majority outcomes and hence those who feel that there viewpoints are considered fails to comply with the team decision which adversely affects the organizational outcomes (Abdel et al., 2017). Further, individual power becomes a neglected issue in group decision making. While a group decision is a collaborative discussion, regardless of their appearance or manner of participation, certain individuals typically tend to obtain a position of superficial leadership. In addition to the above, often only the decision is in the control of an individual person and the others fade into the background in a group, thus undermining the very aim of group conversation. Lastly, cooperation in the decision is very difficult to attain in the group decision making and hence becomes the most difficult way to manage the group decisions. Finally, often the action of the group will result in a disagreement. Therefore, the option proposed is not essentially the correct one, but instead a balance appropriate to those involved as a mid-point. There are various expectations and proposals in which the actions or choices of each participant do not align with each other (Luo et al., 2019).

From the above assessment, it can be concluded that group decision making does have a lot of advantages but indeed comes with several disadvantages too. There are six advantages identified in this assessment. The first is collective information and ideas this helps in mutual information sharing and obtains a successful decision. Next, skilful opinions are encouraged by group decision-making wherein the views differ from each other. Also, it increases the degree of contribution attributable to the participation of all employees. Bigger appropriateness, the multiplicity of views and inspiring people's participation are other advantages. This can be helpful for me in my future service in an organization. Although I will also consider the disadvantages such as time consumption, lack of obligation and lack of cooperative decisions.