Advantages and Disadvantages of Group Decisions Making Essay

Introduction

Group decision making is a process where some people simultaneously interact in an attempt to come up with a solution to the specific problem statement. Unlike individual decision making which involves the sole individual, group decision making is a process that entails participation where many individuals work together to evaluate a problem and choose a solution out of the available alternatives (Robbins & Judge, 2016). However, group decision making has benefits and drawbacks compared to an individual decision-making process.

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Advantages

Group decision making has a more significant base of knowledge in comparison to individual decision making. The group tends to be more endowed with experience because it comprises of more than one person. Two heads are better than one; thus group ideas provided by the group members form a pool of knowledge as a result of the experience and information contributed by each member. It offers more information and to details when the members engage and discuss a particular problem. As a result, groups provide decisions where knowledge is significantly required. Similarly, group members avail some alternatives. This is made possible by each member's contribution as they try to solve the problem at hand. With every member having an individual solution, some choices in regards to the issue are made available. Unlike the own decision making which has a vision that is narrowed to a single perspective, group decision making offers a broader range of views towards a challenge. Thus the decisions arrived by a group are more reliable and dependable than those of individuals.

Extensively, group decision making encourages participation of people, unlike individual decision making which solely relies on the person's rational decisions (Saaty, n.d.). By offering a platform to share ideas, group decision making encourages the involvement of different individuals in a given problem. As a result, this builds teamwork and strengthens the relationship among the people involved in the group. Besides, group changes engage the person who was thought to be hesitant in interaction and speech presentation and ensures their active participation in the group activities.

Disadvantages

On the other hand, group decision making is disadvantaged against individual decision making. Individualism may domineer group decision making. It is when some of the group members influence the final decision making of the entire group other than engaging other members in the collective decision making. Similarly, some inferior group members may fade away while other's opinions are not accounted or included in the process, which by far undermines the primary purpose of the group. Extensively, it is hard to fix responsibility as it does not have onus. There is hardship also encountered in the responsibility setting in the process of the problem-solving. As a result, difficulties are experienced in case the decisions made by the group are wrong. Nonetheless, the solution given by the group may sometimes not be the best in comparison to the individuals. This is because it may be a product of accepted mid-point compromise decision to favor all the parties or the domineering individual's opinion.

Additionally, group decision making consumes a lot of time as the different people try to organize, plan as well as coordinate their meeting activities. Similarly, arriving at the final decision can take a lot of time and be very cumbersome and tiresome. This makes the group decision making more expensive compared to the individual decision making (Preparations for Effective Decision Making, n.d.).

References

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2016). Organisational Behaviour. Melbourne, Vic.: Pearson Australia.

Saaty, T. L. (n.d.). Group Decision Making. Technologies for Supporting Reasoning Communities and Collaborative Decision Making. doi:10.4018/9781609600914.ch007

Preparations for Effective Decision Making. (n.d.). Effective Meetings: Improving Group Decision Making Effective Meetings: Improving Group Decision Making, 17-25. doi:10.4135/9781452232973.n3