Psychological aspects of managerial decision making

This article describes the psychological features of management decision-making, as well as psychological recommendations to improve the efficiency of management decision-making based on the results of experimental work.

Keywords: personality, staff, manager, individual personality traits, making decisions, conscious choice, determinism, indeterminism.

В настоящей статье раскрываются психологические особенности принятия управленческих решений, а также представлены психологические рекомендации по повышению эффективности процесса принятия управленческих решений, основанных на результатах проводимых экспериментальных работ.

Ключевые слова: личность, персонал, менеджер, индивидуальные особенности личности, принятие решений, управленческие решения, осознанный выбор, детерминизм, индетерминизм.

Decision-making is rightly recognized as the central link in the multifaceted activity of a leader. The function of «decision making» is given by its social status, which prescribes the use of objective capabilities and subjective qualities, both one's own and those of others, to influence the course of events; the leader is responsible for the consequences of choice of opportunities.

In this regard, within the framework of social psychology of management, the search for a set of traits, personality traits and characteristics of the leader's behavior, on which the success of leadership depends, is being actively pursued. Behavior in the decision-making process, especially in conditions of uncertainty, is the result of the reflection of social requirements in the individual activities of a professional leader. Management decision making can be viewed from the general psychological positions of the theory of activity. When developing a management decision, a complete hierarchical structure of activity is revealed, including the level of psychophysiological functions, the level of operational support of the activity, the level of action, the level of special activity itself. Accordingly, the operational side of decision-making will be provided with the skills, abilities, and cognitive style of the leader; action side — goal-setting when making a decision; the level of activity — specific motives and personal meanings of the leader. Characteristic for making a decision are the activity of the subject and his awareness to a certain extent of his own activity. In our opinion, a constant struggle or conflict of motives will constitute the specifics of human management. It is his resolution, or leveling, that is reflected in the leader's behavior as a choice of alternatives. At the same time, the potential of leadership abilities, motivational profile, and the ability to take risks are revealed. The leader's behavior expresses his mental organization and life experience.

It is mediated by social attitudes, norms and traditions, relations prevailing in society, which largely determines the content and style of decisions made. The decision-making style has a decisive influence on the formation of norms and traditions, expectations, social attitudes and interpersonal relations in social groups. By the nature of the decisions made, by the ability to resolve problem situations, it is possible to make predictions about a person's ability to work with people, to perform the functions of leadership in general; it is possible to evaluate how individual steps are carried out in the implementation of the solution, which occur mainly in acts of communication and organizational relations.

Particularly significant is the weight of managerial activity in stressful socio-psychological situations. Situations of this kind encourage quick decision-making when information and time are scarce. If the system is working properly, then decision-making becomes routine and the manager exercises control functions. But there are situations that involve a quick change in decision-making schemes, a search for little-known alternatives. In these situations, the status prescribes the intervention of the manager. Thus, management is accompanied by high search activity even before the need arises to carry out special professional activities for decision-making. Even if none of the alternatives for the development of events fully satisfies the leader, he must make a decision, that is, to carry out a «volitional act», choosing one of the options, relying on his professionalism, intellect, intuition. “The choice is made when it is impossible to reduce to a single criterion the preference of at least two of the existing alternatives of behavior. If preference can be revealed by a person directly, then it is permissible to talk about the typical task of finding the right solution, and not making a decision in which the human intellect plays the most important role. The choice, which is the basis of the management decision, cannot be made solely on the basis of intellectual analysis.

It is necessary to take into account the values of the leader and subordinates who will be affected by the decision, the interaction of mind and will, which does not exclude the adoption of unpredictable decisions. Given that the leader is constantly in a situation of conflict of motives and choices, he will act as a stress-resistant person, capable of solving even in conditions of psychological stress. The manager's assessment and choice of behavioral opportunities are closely related to social attitudes, relationships and role expectations of the subjects of managerial relations. Foresight and prediction of the best possible behavior are closely related to the processes of social perception, interpretation, and attribution. «At the same time, the leader's consciousness reflects the choice itself and the realized opportunity, but not the subjective factors of this choice».

Each leader, regardless of his field of activity, performs similar actions when solving problems. Most often they include the following: diagnostics of the problem; formulation of constraints and criteria for decision making; identification of alternatives; the final choice. The most important stages of making managerial decisions are the initial ones, since they are associated with the collection of information and its distribution and correlation. Top managers generally prefer the informational type of power. The first hypotheses and models, which are essentially informational, arise precisely at the early stages of management. “The first, initial stage is awareness of the problem. In order to understand the problem, it is necessary to have a lot of quality information. The second stage is collecting all the information. In order to find out the reasons for difficulties or in order to raise new questions, it is necessary to have information, both internal, concerning objective factors, and external — the experience of related enterprises, scientific data on the organization of labor and management, technology, economics, etc. The third stage of the solution is the hypothesis. A hypothesis is a model of a possible decision, a preliminary decision made on the basis of primary information. " To optimize the decision-making process, collective forms of work are used.

The advantages of group decision-making are: in a better understanding of the essence of problems and ways to solve them; in a faster and «smoother» implementation of the decisions made in practice; in effective interaction, in the establishment of an atmosphere of cooperation; in the growth of self-awareness, self-affirmation of team members; in the ability to optimally combine the goals of an individual, a group and an organization as a whole». «However, it should be remembered that group decisions also have negative aspects: they open up a fairly wide field for the emergence of mutual misunderstanding, misinformation, group stereotypes, false group solidarity, etc. So that the adoption of group decisions in joint management activities is not at all unambiguously optimal».

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