"I won't back down?" complexity and courage in government executive decision making
By: Kelman, Steven.
Contributor(s): Pandit, Gayatri | Sanders, Ronald.
Material type:
ArticlePublisher: 2016Description: p.465-471.Subject(s): Decision making | Civil service
In:
Public Administration ReviewSummary: Senior government executives make many difficult decisions, but research suggests that individual cognitive limitations and the pathologies of ''groupthink'' impede their ability to make value-maximizing choices. From this literature has emerged a normative model that Irving Janis calls ''vigilant problem solving,'' a process intended for the most complex decisions. To explore its use by senior public officials, the authors interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet-level organizations in the U.S. federal government, asking how they made their most difficult decisions. The initial focus was on whether they employed a vigilant approach to making decisions that were informationally, technically, or politically complex. Most executives identified their single most-difficult decision as one that required courage; they often made such courageous decisions after personal reflection and/or consultation with a small number of trusted advisors rather in ways that could be described as vigilant. The different approaches for making complex decisions, compared with those involving courage, are discussed and a contingency model of effective executive decision making is proposed that requires leaders (and their advisors) to be ''ambidextrous'' in their approach. - Reproduced.
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Articles
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Indian Institute of Public Administration | Volume no: 76, Issue no: 3 | Available | AR112205 |
Senior government executives make many difficult decisions, but research suggests that individual cognitive limitations and the pathologies of ''groupthink'' impede their ability to make value-maximizing choices. From this literature has emerged a normative model that Irving Janis calls ''vigilant problem solving,'' a process intended for the most complex decisions. To explore its use by senior public officials, the authors interviewed 20 heads of subcabinet-level organizations in the U.S. federal government, asking how they made their most difficult decisions. The initial focus was on whether they employed a vigilant approach to making decisions that were informationally, technically, or politically complex. Most executives identified their single most-difficult decision as one that required courage; they often made such courageous decisions after personal reflection and/or consultation with a small number of trusted advisors rather in ways that could be described as vigilant. The different approaches for making complex decisions, compared with those involving courage, are discussed and a contingency model of effective executive decision making is proposed that requires leaders (and their advisors) to be ''ambidextrous'' in their approach. - Reproduced.
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