Are Groups the Best Way to Make Decisions? A Literature Review

Abstract

The decision-making process and the group are two multidisciplinary topics that have captured the interest of many researchers, but at the same time are accompanied by high complexity. The decision-making is considered a continuous and dynamic process that involves a choice, and is oriented to organizational goals. The organizational performance is determined by the decisions taken and their effective implementation. Increasingly, companies have to decide for different situations, never tackled in the past, and often the decisions are not revealed what was expected due to the increased complexity and uncertainty. In this context assumes importance the group decision-making. But the group decisions are really better than individual decisions? Studies on the efficacy of group decision-making lead to different conclusions. However, most of them believe that the group decides better. The main goal of this paper is to show that the comparison between the group and the individual to determine which one is better is a complex process and thus, instead of establishing this is more appropriate defining the criteria to take into analysis before determining whether group should be used or not. So, the first thing done in this paper is discussing about the benefits and limitations that accompany the use of groups with decision-making purpose. Afterwards, with reference to different distinguishing criteria we stop on the type of decisions. The aim is to emphasize that regardless of the many advantages of groups, some contextual factors as risk, uncertainty, complexity, the amount of information available, time limits and the characteristics of the decision as hierarchical level, degree of structuring, repeatability, type of decision-maker and time horizon, should be the main elements to keep in consideration for determining whether it is more appropriate the use of group to make decisions.

DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2016.v5n1p301