Reducing biases of decision-making processes in complex organizations

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to study how biases in decision-making processes could be reduced. In this vein, over the past 30 years, scholars interested in decision-making have been raising their interest in the development of quality control tools to mitigate the effects of cognitive distortions. However, they have often neglected the use of psychological instruments for understanding the role of decision-makers’ personality in the quality of the decision-making processes.

Design/methodology/approach

This is an intrinsic case study about an Italian complex organization (i.e. Consorzio ELIS) which tries to shed light on the identified research question. Three decision-makers responsible for the decision processes of three new business initiatives were interviewed using a recent quality control tool (i.e. checklist) and their personality types were tracked by performing MBTI® tests. The thematic analysis, approached by using NVivo software, and after six months of direct observations inside the organization, allowed an understanding of the decision processes and their distortions.

Findings

The results of this study show how initiatives with frequent quality control mechanisms and different stakeholders are more able to pass the decision phase than initiatives with no controls, few participants and little difference between personalities.

Originality/value

The results of this work show how reducing biases of decision-making processes in complex organizations can benefit from the simultaneous use of the checklist and MBTI® test. As demonstrated, when used together, they can make more effective use of and provide better results for both, as well as providing a better quality control of the decision-making processes. From that, an approach is proposed that both takes into account the two perspectives and can work together with other cognitive problem structuring methods.

Citation

Cristofaro, M. (2017), "Reducing biases of decision-making processes in complex organizations", Management Research Review, Vol. 40 No. 3, pp. 270-291. https://doi.org/10.1108/MRR-03-2016-0054