Behailu Shiferaw
Many a time, two kinds of thoughts are observed when it comes to decision making. Some believe a head is never better than two and prefer group decision making while others contend too many cooks spoil the broth and oppose it. Even in our country, Ethiopia, these thoughts are reflected in our linguistics. Some say ‘kand birtu hulet dekama’ while others say, ‘set beza gomen teneza’.
Which ever way it is made, every decision has got its own process. And only the fact that two or more people are involved in the decision making process does not mean they have equally participated. Roger Hart argues that sometimes group members are manipulated; sometimes used as decoration and at other times tokenized.
Group decision making is not a matter left only to high level management personnel. People make group decisions in their everyday lives. I, as a child more than a decade ago, discussed with my friends on which day we should play football after checking our academic schedule. I, as young person today, sat down with my girlfriend, discussed and decided whether to start pre-marital sex or to abstain until marriage after assessing our readiness to engage in the practice. I remember my parents discussing to decide which school to send me, my brothers and sisters to or even whether to have another child or not after evaluating their economic state. Group decisions are made in several aspects of our lives every day, if not even more frequently.
Even if we are so inextricably linked with it, we are not yet aware of the process. Therefore, we shape the processes the way that benefits us.
Randi Hirokawa’s functional perspective on group decision making or Scott Pool’s Adaptive Structuration Theory agree on the fact that most of the time group decision makings do not follow the procedure they should have followed. Schwartz Andrew has thus come up with few basic mistakes commonly committed in group decision making processes all over the world. Some of them are usually observed in our country and are hence explained with specific and locally relevant examples down here.
Decision by lack of response is when someone suggests an idea and, before anyone has commented on it, someone else suggests another idea, until the group eventually finds one it will act on. This results in shooting down the original idea before it has really been considered. All the ideas that are bypassed have, in a sense, been rejected by the group. This kind of decision making process results in lesser involvement and thus poor contribution of the ignored participants.
We can see the case of the in-house consultation meetings on Ethiopian draft press law. Following the Ethiopian journalists’ proposal that they should comment on the new draft press law before its enactment, Pact, a US based international NGO, has brought together Ethiopian media people to comment on the Draft Press Law and Information Act. The media people happily participated in the consultation meetings and contributed their share to the betterment of the law. However, few months later, the consultation began to be spearheaded by some notable journalists. Many comments were bypassed until the notable ones spoke and the floor is open for discussion. Even if the idea of the notable journalists would not become the final decision, they were at least allowed time to convince others. And that has resulted in the majority feeling that their contributions will always not be given due attention. And the number of participants dropped hugely through time due to this discontentment.
Decision by Authority Rule: In this method, many groups start out with–or quickly set up–a power structure that makes it clear that the chairman (or someone else in authority) will make the ultimate decision. The group can generate ideas and hold free discussion, but at any time the chairman may say that, having heard the discussion (girana qegnun kedemete behuala), he or she has decided upon a given plan. In many cases that I have witnessed myself, the decisions are already made before the proposal is put forward for discussion. Therefore the discussion is just nominal to strengthen members’ confidence in their leaders’ democracy. Even where the decision is not pre-decided, whether this method is effective depends a great deal upon whether the chairman is a sufficiently good listener to have combined the right information on which to make the decision. Furthermore, if the group must also implement the decision, then the authority-rule method produces a bare minimum of involvement by the group (basically, they will do it because they have to, not necessarily because they want to). Hence it undermines the potential quality of implementation.
In the case of the Ethiopian parliament, where almost all members vote for what their party leaders support no matter which side they support in their mind, EPRDF always makes the ultimate decision no matter how open discussion is there. The Ethiopian government cabinet has also been severely criticized for having had such Authority Rule decision making procedure giving others except the prime minister just a rubber stamping role. However, the prime minister opposed this idea and said in an interview with Hardtalk, BBC, that he was in some instances, forced to implement things, for example the Ethio-Eritrean war, he did not believe in just because his ideas were voted out by the majority of the cabinet. And he presented it as one of the reasons he started thinking to leave his seat after the next term.
Decision by Minority Rule is when a single person can “enforce” a decision, particularly if he or she is in some kind of chairmanship role, by not giving opposition an opportunity to build up. A common form of minority rule is for two or more members to come to a quick and powerful agreement on a course of action, then challenge the group with a quick, “Does anyone object?,” and, if no one raises their voice within two seconds, they proceed with “Let’s go ahead then.” The trap is the assumption that silence means consent.
Decision by Majority Rule (Voting and Polling): It is more familiar decision-making procedures are often taken for granted as applying to any group situation because they reflect our political system. One simple version is to poll everyone’s opinion following some period of discussion. If the majority of participants feels the same way, it is often assumed that is the decision. The other method is the more formal one of stating a clear alternative and asking for votes in favor of it, votes against it, and abstentions. One tradition which the Ethiopian politics has recently picked up is polling the public opinion after giving a distorted option. We can site an example here: The secession of Eritrea through referendum.
During the secession of Eritrea, the Eritreans in Ethiopia and in Eritrea itself were given a chance whether to support the secession of Eritrea or not. But the problem lied within the question. When the people to turned out to vote, they were given two options something like Barinet woyis Netsanet to mean Slavery or Freedom. And Ethiopians who asked why, were answered, “We have gone to the jungle and liberated the country. So if you need to bring Eritrea back, then there is the gun for you. Struggle and bring it back.” Here we can imagine how ill the premise was, logically speaking. Therefore, we can say that the group decision making was not as sound as it was supposed to be considering the weight of the matter.
On the surface, this method seems completely sound, but surprisingly often it turns out that decisions made by this method are not well implemented, even by the group that made the decision. What is wrong? Typically, it turns out that two kinds of psychological barriers exist:
First, the minority members often feel there was an insufficient period of discussion for them to really get their point of view across; hence they feel misunderstood and sometimes resentful. Second, the minority members often feel that the voting has created two camps within the group and that these camps are now in a win-lose competition: The minority feels that their camp lost the first round, but that it is just a matter of time until it can regroup, pick up some support and win the next time a vote comes up.
In other words, voting creates coalitions, and the preoccupation of the losing coalition is not how to implement what the majority wants, but how to win the next battle. We remember what happened with in TPLF between Meles’ and Gebru’s group. And CUD’s split is also not a distant memory either.
What Are the Actual Steps in a Decision Made by a Group?
According to Randy Hirokawa’s Functional Perspective on Group Decision Making, we have got four steps that should be taken to come up with effective decision making.
The first, as Dr. Mohammed Hassan also agrees, is analysis of the problem. Dr. Mohammed says that identification of the problem is the first and crucial step toward solution. Then we will have to set a goal and identify different alternatives. The advantage of identifying different alternatives is that if we do not see as many alternatives as is realistically possible, then relatively less number of alternative solutions could be introduced and the corresponding possibility of finding the acceptable answer will be low. This step calls for identifying as many solutions to the problem as possible before discussing the specific advantages and disadvantages of each. What happens frequently in problem-solving is that the first two or three suggested solutions are debated and discussed for the full time allowed for the entire problem-solving session. As a result, many worthwhile ideas are never identified or considered. By identifying many solutions, a superior idea often surfaces that reduces or even eliminates the need for discussing details of more debatable issues. Finally we have to plan the implementation and distribute responsibility explicitly stating who does what, when, how and where. However, for this to happen, the process should be as participatory and open as possible.
So What is the Better Way?
Whether people use Randi Hirokawa’s functional perspective on group decision making or Scott Pools Adaptive Structuration Theory, there should always be some consensus reached among as many of the group members as possible. Unfortunately, reaching consensus is one of the most time-consuming techniques for group decision-making. It is also quite important to understand that consensus is not the same thing as unanimity. Rather, it is a state of affairs where communications have been sufficiently open (and the group climate has been sufficiently supportive) to make everyone in the group feel that they have had their fair chance to influence the decision.
If there is a consensus among as many of the group members as possible, then we can say there is a group agreement and hence a relatively better group decision making process.
