What are the advantages and disadvantages of group decision making and individual decision making?

Groups, generally, are considered to be more effective as compared to single individuals. Some of the advantages inherent in group decision making are :

1. Greater Knowledge Base : Groups tend to have a greater knowledge base, since these involve more than one person and two heads are always considered better than one. All the members of the group have their own specialties and they contribute lots of information and knowledge to the knowledge base of the group. Thus, the decisions where knowledge is of paramount importance, can be effectively taken only at group levels.

2. Greater Number of Alternatives : More the amount of knowledge and information, greater will be the number of alternative available for the solution of a problem. Greater number of alternatives offer more perspective on a problem as compared to the narrow vision of a single perspective.

3. Effective Implementation of Decisions : The implementation of decisions will be more effective as the people who are going to implement the decisions are the people who also participated in decision making. People are more committed to the implementation of the decisions which they themselves have participated in decision making. In such a case, acceptance of the decisions will also be more, which is a very important consideration because a decision which has more acceptance will be more effective.

4. Elimination of Personal Biases : As a number of people are involved in the decision making, the biases they have introduced due to individual decision making are eliminated. The decisions become more reliable and dependable as compared to individual decisions.

5. Larger number of members provide more perspectives of the problem. As such, the narrow vision of a single perspective is avoided in making decisions.

6. With larger number of group members, the participation also increases that helps to reach at a quality decision.

7. Following increased group participation, comprehension of final decision arrived at is usually high.

Disadvantages of Group Decision Making

All is not good with group decision-making. It suffers from the following disadvantages also :

1. Group decision-making is a time consuming process.

2. Influence groups usually manipulate the group decision in a direction of their liking and interest.

3. Sometimes decisions made by the group members are simply a compromise between the various options offered by the group members.

In view of above disadvantages, there is a need to improve group decision. What follows next is the same.

Techniques of Group Decisions Making

Efforts have been made by the social scientists to develop strategies to make group decision making more and more effective. For such techniques are brain-storming, nominal group technique, Delphi technique and consensus mapping. A brief description of these follows :

1. Brainstorming : Brainstorming technique was originally adopted by Alex Osborn (May 24, 1888 - May 13, 1966) in 1938 in an American company for encouraging creative thinking in groups of six to eight people. According to Osborn, brainstorming means using the brain to storm the problem. In brainstorming, the participants should be connected with the problem directly or closely. It is based on the following four basic guidelines :

(a) Generate as many ideas as possible.

(b) Be creative, freewheeling and imaginative.

(c) Build upon piggyback, extend, or combine earlier ideas.

(d) Withhold criticism of others' ideas.

There are two principles that underlie brainstorming. One is deferred judgment, by which all ideas are encouraged without criticism and evaluation. The second principle is that quantity breeds quality. As more ideas come forth, it facilitates to develop the higher-quality ones. The success of brainstorming depends on each member's capacity and willingness to listen to others' thoughts, to use these thoughts as a stimulus to spark new ideas of their own and then feel free to express them. Brainstorming sessions last from ten minutes to one hour and do not require much preparation.

Although brainstorming technique is found useful for all types of decisions, it is particularly useful for simple and well-defined problems. It stimulates members to generate new ideas for solving a particular problem.

2. Nominal Group Technique (NGT) : As mentioned earlier, the two disadvantages of group decision making are: (i) it is time-consuming and (ii) the decisions are influenced by the dominant members. The nominal group technique (NGT) minimizes these problems. In the NGT, a nominal group exists in name only. The members have minimal interaction prior to making a decision. The NGT follows the following process :

(a) Members are brought together and presented a problem.

(b) Each member develops solution or ideas independently and writes them on cards.

(c) Each member presents his/her ideas to the group in a round-robin procedure.

(d) When the presentation of ideas by each member is over, brief time is allotted to clarifications of ideas or solutions.

(e) Group members individually rank their preferences for the best alternatives by secret ballot.

(f) Based on above, the group decision is announced.

The advantages of the NGT include the integration of both group creative and individual creativity and the equal participation by all members in group decision making. The disadvantage of the NGT is reported that the members do not have the opportunity to benefit from cross fertilization of ideas.

3. Delphi Technique : The name Delphi indicates a shrine at which the ancient Greeks used to pray for information about the future. In Delphi technique of decision-making, members are scattered over large distances and do not have face-to-face interaction for decision-making. Members are selected because they are experts or have relevant information to share; A typical approach involved in decision-making works as a follows :

Firstly, a small group of members designs a questionnaire which is administered in a larger group. The results so obtained are then tabulated and used in developing a revised questionnaire. The questionnaire is then completed by the larger group. The results of the first round are fed back to the respondent group to use these in their subsequent responses. The process is repeated several times until the response converse satisfactorily or a consensus is reached.

The effectiveness of the Delphi decision-making technique depends on adequate time, participants' expertise, communication skill and motivation of the members to immerse themselves in the task. The major advantages the delphi technique offers include :

(a) Elimination of interpersonal problems among panelists.

(b) Efficient use of expert's time.

(c) Adequate time for reflection and analysis by respondents.

(d) Diversity and quantity of ideas generated.