Contenido

La indecisión se define como una falta de determinación ante una situación, es inseguridad, falta de carácter o valor. Es un trastorno que destruye la seguridad y que se vuelve un problema a la hora de decidir, es la incapacidad de elegir entre dos o más opciones, como por ejemplo, decidir qué ropa usar, qué menú escoger en un restaurante o simplemente decir no a lo que no se quiere hacer, todo ello por la falta de confianza en sí mismo.

Se puede considerar a la indecisión como falta de autonomía "Autonomía (filosofía y psicología)"), que impide a un individuo tomar una decisión, elegir algún camino entre varios, o resolver alguna problemática.

La ‘’indecisión’’ provoca hacer juicios prematuros sin tener la suficiente información requerida para procesarlo y agregando un valor ético y moral, muchas veces son inconscientes.

Al preocuparse de problemas que no están a nuestro alcance o que no podemos resolver, sólo podemos observar nuestra falta de capacidad, por lo cual entramos en bloqueos emocionales y conflictos para toma de decisiones. Teniendo en cuenta que lo más común para llegar a un bloqueo, son los miedos.

Dr. Jeffrey Z. Rubín (1986) identificó algunos factores que entorpecen la toma de decisiones:.

Highest frequency stage

According to studies, the most frequent stages of indecision are pre-adolescence and adolescence, as such, they are difficult stages in which young people find it difficult to decide in various aspects of their life; The elements that may influence are fear, anger, apathy, etc.

Pre-adolescence and adolescence are complicated because you want to stop being a child but, at the same time, continue being one and start being an adult, but you fear being one. It is the indecision of “Am I a child or am I an adult?”, “Who am I?”

Although it is worth mentioning that throughout our lives making decisions is quite a challenge. How many times have we been undecided, and when we arrive at an answer we realize that it was not as complicated as it seemed?

So in conclusion we can say that indecisions will always be present throughout our lives, but not as strong as in pre-adolescence and adolescence.

Cause

Some of the causes may be that the lack of confidence in one's own abilities to solve problems comes from within the family, that is, that given an authoritarian family environment, it means that children do not have optimal personal development, so they reach adulthood without knowing how to make decisions, the same thing happens in an over-protective environment where they practically solve the children's lives, affecting their own maturity.

The poor ability to make decisions is one of the problems that causes the most inconvenience when it comes to personal and professional development.

“The fear of taking the wrong path is often the reason why elections are not held and are always referred to another person who must exercise that responsibility.

Making decisions is a learning process that has a lot to do with one's own security and self-confidence, it has nothing to do with being right in what one decides to do or not do. “We all make mistakes, we must lose the fear of making mistakes to be able to choose without fear and thus be able to make decisions, whether good or bad.”[1]​.

The indecisive is the person who does not decide to execute an action, nor to select a strategy, does not orient himself to a certain direction, renouncing others, does not dare to solve problems. Each decision commits us and ultimately what the undecided person fears is commitment "Commitment (Right)"), they are not willing to pay the cost of their decisions, they do not want to take the risk of losing.

There are those who find it difficult to choose because they are insecure and perfectionist personalities and those who exaggeratedly cannot make any decision, no matter how small it may be. The magnitude of indecision takes on its greatest measure when the person feels seriously overwhelmed by the slightest choice they have to make, generally due to the obsessive fear of making a mistake. This disorder also includes in many cases a state of estrangement that gives them the sensation of being dominated by another. This feeling of submission to the will of another hinders their way of speaking, their thoughts, their ideas, their identity. As a defense, these people can live in a hurry, eat and speak quickly.

Generalmente, escondemos nuestras emociones, sentimientos, anhelos, inquietudes tras la máscara de la represión con la que nos obligamos a tomar la decisión más costosa, que es el no tomar una decisión, para así simular que no somos responsables de las consecuencias y eludimos el efecto creado, si es negativo el resultado lo desconocemos, y si fuera positivo le damos crédito a la suerte y en tantas ocasiones a alguna divinidad. El conflicto que se tiene en el momento de tomar una decisión suele desarrollarse en diferentes circunstancias como:.

The mood

Moments of sadness, anxiety, fear, euphoria "Euphoria (state)") and any other, alter the level of perception of a specific reality, and any decision is determined by the emotional state of the moment, it would be better to look for a moment of tranquility to choose more wisely.

The importance of the situation

In these situations, a large amount of stress is handled, and even more so if the options are unknown, which causes an emotional imbalance.

The fear of change

There has been talk of the state of comfort, in which the individual prefers to be in a conformist situation before deciding to change, for fear of the consequences that taking a step forward may bring.

Multiple options to take

In this situation the individual does not decide on any option, possibly wanting everything for himself. Selfishness is another side of indecision, since by wanting to have it all it assumes that all options are included and discards all decisions and sacrifices. "He who serves two masters with one looks bad, and if he serves everyone he runs out of energy."

Low self-esteem

When there is low self-esteem or ignorance of the most basic rights of the human being, the individual is susceptible to being influenced by other people who find it convenient to take advantage of them, since they are manipulated in their decision-making.

Inability to live in the here and now, despising what you have, constantly longing for what you don't have, despising what you do, leads to eternal waiting, that perpetual blindness, giving no option to choose because it is still an illusion.

It usually happens in people raised under a strict and authoritarian parenting pattern by their parents.

Partiendo de las definiciones de Hellriegel"), Slocum") (2004) y Stoner, (2003), la toma de decisiones es una parte importante de la labor del gerente. Sin embargo, cuando un gerente toma una decisión o cuando el coste de buscar y evaluar las alternativas es bajo, el modelo racional proporciona una descripción moderadamente precisa del proceso de decisión. Pero tales situaciones, afirma Robbins (1999), son la excepción. En el ámbito organizacional, la mayoría de las decisiones significativas se realizan mediante el juicio, más que por un modelo prescriptivo definido.

Dado lo anterior, a continuación se establece una visión de cómo se toman realmente la mayoría de las decisiones en las organizaciones, a través de la caracterización de tres modelos de toma de decisión de acuerdo con los criterios establecidos McLeod (2000): el racional, el de racionalidad limitada y el político.

La utilidad de estos modelos reside en que ayudan a identificar la complejidad y variedad de las situaciones para la toma de decisiones en una organización.

En las organizaciones en general y en las empresas en particular suele existir una jerarquía que determina el tipo de acciones que se realizan dentro de ella y, en consecuencia, el tipo de decisiones que se deben tomar, la Ciencia administrativa divide a la empresa en 3 niveles jerárquicos:.

Conforme se sube en la jerarquía de una organización, la capacidad para tomar decisiones no programadas o no estructuradas adquiere más importancia, ya que son este tipo de decisiones las que atañen a esos niveles. Por tanto, la mayor parte de los programas para el desarrollo de gerentes pretenden mejorar sus habilidades para tomar decisiones no programadas, por regla general enseñándoles a analizar los problemas en forma sistemática y a tomar decisiones lógicas.

A medida que se baja en esta jerarquía, las tareas que se desempeñan son cada vez más rutinarias, por lo que las decisiones en estos niveles serán más estructuradas (programadas).

Adicionalmente, una organización también estará dividida en varias secciones funcionales, son varias las propuestas de división que se han planteado para una empresa de forma genérica, aunque la más aceptada es la que considera los siguientes departamentos o unidades funcionales:.

Las decisiones también serán diferentes, en función de en qué unidad funcional o departamento tengan lugar.

Rational Model

The rational model: pursues the constitution of a process of choosing between alternatives to maximize the benefits of the organization. It includes a broad definition of the problem, extensive collection and analysis of data, as well as a careful evaluation of alternatives.

Andreu, in the year (2001), states that the criteria for evaluating alternatives are well known and assumes that the generation and exchange of information between individuals is objective and precise. Therefore, the rational decision-making model is based on 3 explicit assumptions:

This model has an implicit assumption, says McLeod (2000), “There are no ethical dilemmas in the decision-making process.” Furthermore, from an organizational point of view there are some limitations to this model:

In summary, it can be suggested that the rational model be used to the extent that it is feasible, without expecting it to be the only or even the main guide in making many organizational decisions.

Bounded rationality model

The Bounded Rationality Model: describes the limitations of rationality and reveals the decision-making processes frequently used by people and teams. This model explains why different people or teams make different decisions when they have exactly the same information.

Thus, the limited rationality model reflects individual or team tendencies to:.

The decision rules from the organizational perspective, according to McLeod (2000), are a part of the limited rationality model. That is, it provides quick and easy ways to reach a decision without detailed analysis and searches. They are written and applied easily. However, its main disadvantage is that it is based on making decisions by building simplified models that extract the essential characteristics of the problems, without capturing all their complexity.

Political Model

The Political Model: describes people's decision-making to satisfy their own interests. Preferences based on selfish personal goals rarely change as new information is acquired. Therefore, the definition of problems, the search and collection of data, the exchange of information and the evaluation criteria are only methods used to bias the result in favor of the decision maker.

Decisions reflect, according to Laudon (2002), the distribution of power in the organization and the effectiveness of the tactics used by managers and employees, determine the impact of the decisions.

The political model predominates in organizations around the world, that is, it prevails over the two models described above because it is the basis of the organizational procedures established by senior management.

From the perspective of management practice, the political model is expressed very vividly in organizations through the use of various methods of influence, means by which individuals or groups try to exercise power or influence the behavior of others.

Now, all decisions are based on the information available, which allows establishing a criterion based on alternative solutions to the same problem. Given this, management, for the purposes of organizational decision-making, makes use of information systems supported by installed information technology, which generate relevant business information, which according to the hierarchical structure establishes priorities for its application.

Todas las personas que toman una decisión poseen una serie única de características personales que influyen en su resolución del problema. Por ejemplo, en una empresa, el gerente creativo tolerará bien la incertidumbre y ofrecerá diversas alternativas para su decisión en un menor tiempo. La toma de decisiones es el proceso mediante el cual se realiza una elección entre las opciones o formas para resolver diferentes situaciones de la vida en diferentes contextos: a nivel laboral, familiar, personal, sentimental o empresarial (utilizando metodologías cuantitativas que brinda la administración). La toma de decisiones consiste, básicamente, en elegir una opción entre las disponibles para resolver un problema actual o potencial (aun cuando no se evidencie un conflicto latente).

En términos básicos según Herman hesse y Slocum (2004), la toma de decisiones es el “proceso de definición de problemas, recopilación de datos, generación de alternativas y selección de un curso de acción”.

Por su parte, Stoner, (2003) define la toma de decisiones como “el proceso para identificar y solucionar un curso de acción para resolver un problema específico”.

La toma de decisiones a nivel individual se caracteriza por el hecho de que una persona haga uso de su razonamiento y pensamiento para elegir una solución a un problema que se le presente en la vida; es decir, si una persona tiene un problema, deberá ser capaz de resolverlo individualmente tomando decisiones con ese específico motivo.

En la toma de decisiones importa la elección de un camino a seguir, por lo que en una etapa anterior deben evaluarse alternativas de acción. Si estas últimas no están presentes, no existirá decisión. Para tomar una decisión, cualquiera que sea su naturaleza, es necesario conocer, comprender, analizar un problema, para así poder darle solución. En algunos casos, por ser tan simples y cotidianos, este proceso se realiza de forma implícita y se soluciona muy rápidamente, pero existen otros casos en los cuales las consecuencias de una mala o buena elección pueden repercutir en la vida y si es en un contexto laboral en el éxito o fracaso de la organización, para los cuales es necesario realizar un proceso más estructurado que puede dar más seguridad e información para resolver el problema, evaluándolas de un modo diferente al de otro gerente con una personalidad más conservadora y menos propenso a aceptar riesgos. Teniendo en cuenta esta información, los investigadores han tratado de identificar los diferentes estilos para tomar decisiones.

El supuesto básico del modelo de la toma de decisiones reside en reconocer que las personas difieren en dos dimensiones:.

La primera es la forma de pensar. A la hora de tomar una decisión, hay personas que lo hacen con una mayor lógica y racionalidad, procesando la información de forma secuencial. Sin embargo, otras personas se enfrentan a este proceso de forma más creativa e intuitiva, contemplando una perspectiva más amplia.

La segunda dimensión hacer referencia a la tolerancia a la ambigüedad que toleran las personas. En aquellas situaciones donde el individuo, para tomar la decisión, requiera de mucha coherencia y orden en la información, el grado de tolerancia a la ambigüedad es mínimo. En contraposición, en aquellas personas capaces de procesar multitud de información al mismo tiempo, asumiendo con ello un importante grado de incertidumbre, la tolerancia a la ambigüedad es elevada.

Teniendo en cuenta estas dos dimensiones, Stephen P. Robbins (Supervision Today, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1995) desarrolló un diagrama donde aparecen los cuatro estilos para la toma de decisiones.

Management style

The managerial decision-making style is characterized by a low tolerance for ambiguity and a totally rational way of thinking. In this style are those people with a high degree of logical reasoning, capable of making quick decisions, focused on the short term. Its effectiveness and speed in decision-making allows a solution to be adopted with minimal information and evaluating few alternatives.

Analytical style

The analytical decision-making style is characterized by a greater tolerance for ambiguity than managerial types, combined with a completely rational way of thinking. These people need more information before making a decision, considering and analyzing more alternatives. Individuals situated in this analytical style are characterized by their ability to adapt or face unique situations.

Conceptual style

The conceptual decision-making style encompasses people with a high tolerance for ambiguity and an intuitive way of thinking. These people are characterized by having a broad capacity to process information from a broad perspective and a high analytical capacity, trying to analyze many alternatives. They focus on the long term and often look for creative solutions to problems.

Behavioral style

The behavioral style represents those people whose way of thinking is intuitive but whose degree of tolerance for ambiguity is low. These people work well with others, are open to suggestions, and care about those who work with them. Acceptance from others is important for those of this decision-making style.

The four decision-making styles could be considered independent of each other. However, it is easy to detect that decision making is the process by which a choice is made between options or ways to resolve different life situations in different contexts: at work, family, personal, sentimental or business level (using quantitative methodologies provided by the administration). Decision making basically consists of choosing an option among those available to resolve a current or potential problem (even when a latent conflict is not evident).

In basic terms according to Hellriegel and Slocum (2004) it is the “process of defining problems, collecting data, generating alternatives and selecting a course of action.”

For its part, Stoner (2003) defines decision making as “the process of identifying and solving a course of action to solve a specific problem.”

Decision making at the individual level is characterized by the fact that a person uses their reasoning and thinking to choose a solution to a problem that arises in life; That is, if a person has a problem, they must be able to solve it individually by making decisions for that specific reason.

In decision-making, the choice of a path to follow is important, so alternatives for action must be evaluated at an earlier stage. If the latter are not present, there will be no decision. To make a decision, whatever its nature, it is necessary to know, understand, and analyze a problem, in order to be able to solve it. In some cases, because they are so simple and everyday, this process is carried out implicitly and is solved very quickly, but there are other cases in which the consequences of a bad or good choice can have repercussions on life and, if it is in a work context, on the success or failure of the organization, for which it is necessary to carry out a more structured process that can provide more security and information to resolve the problem. The individual with a dominant style would benefit from having characteristics of the other three styles as possible alternatives for a better resolution to a specific situation.

Decision making is defined as a cognitive process in which a choice is made between possible alternatives, even when it is only one possible alternative there is another potential: “inaction”, not acting.

Las situaciones, ambientes o contextos en los cuales se toman las decisiones se pueden clasificar según el conocimiento y control que se tenga sobre las variables que intervienen o influencian el problema, ya que la decisión final o la solución que se tome va a estar condicionada por dichas variables.

Certainty environment

In this context, there is complete knowledge about the problem (exact, measurable and reliable information about the result of each of the alternatives considered), and the solution options that are proposed will always cause known and invariable results. When making the decision, you should only think about the option that generates the greatest benefit.

In an environment of certainty or certainty, individuals have full information about the problem, the alternative solutions are obvious and the possible results of each decision are clear. Under these conditions, individuals can foresee and even control events and results by having adequate knowledge and a clear definition of both the problem and the alternative solutions. In this context, decision making is relatively easy. The decision maker chooses the solution that provides the best potential result. However, we must not forget that a problem can have many possible solutions, and calculating the expected results of all of them can be extremely slow and expensive.

For example, the purchasing agent of a printing company has to decide on several paper suppliers in order to obtain standard quality paper at a lower price and better service. In this situation, the purchasing manager will have information about the different distributors and will only have to carefully study the possible alternatives until he achieves his objective.

Risk environment

Risk could be defined as the probability of an adverse event, impact or consequence occurring. In the decision-making process under risk, the decision-maker has complete information to solve the problem, that is, he has knowledge of it, he knows the possible solutions, but he is not able to diagnose with certainty the result of any alternative, even if he has enough information to foresee the probability that it will lead us to a desired state of affairs.

In this type of decision, the possible solution options have a certain known probability of generating an outcome. In these cases, mathematical models can be used or the decision-maker can also use objective or subjective probability to estimate the possible result.

Objective probability is the possibility of a result occurring based on specific facts, it can be figures from previous years or studies carried out for this purpose. In subjective probability, the result is determined based on the personal and individual opinions and judgments of each person.

The main decision criteria used on decision tables in a risk environment are:

Uncertain environment

There is deficient information to make the decision, there is no control over the situation, it is not known how it can vary or the interaction of the variables of the problem, different solution options can be proposed but probability cannot be assigned to the results they yield. For this reason, it is called "uncertainty without probability."

Based on the above, there are two kinds of uncertainty:

La separación del proceso en etapas puede ser tan resumida o tan extensa como se desee, pero podemos identificar principalmente las siguientes etapas:.

Identify and analyze the problem

This stage consists of understanding the current condition and visualizing the desired condition, that is, finding the problem and recognizing that a decision must be made to reach its solution. The problem can be current, because there is a gap between the actual present condition and the desired one, or potential, because it is estimated that said gap will exist in the future.

When identifying the problem, it is necessary to have a clear and objective vision, and to be very clear about the term alterity, that is, to listen to the ideologies of others in order to formulate a possible collective solution to the problem.

For this, the formulation of the initial question is essential, as it constitutes the starting point of any decision.

The business world is overwhelmed by an infinite number of decisions that must be made at every moment and that, to a large extent, will determine the direction that companies take. In this way, the information obtained must be rich, varied and relevant, while it must come from various sources and through different forms (verbal, statistics, data, etc.).

And within this area, quantitative methods become some of the most reliable tools when it comes to basing a decision thanks to their ability to manage, process and analyze data quickly and effectively.

Identify the decision criteria and weigh them

See also criterion.

It consists of identifying those aspects that are relevant when making the decision, that is, those guidelines on which the decision made depends.

Weighting is assigning a value relative to the importance of each criterion in the decision made, since they are all important but not in the same way.

Many times, the identification of criteria is not done consciously prior to the following stages, but rather decisions are made without making them explicit, based on the personal experience of the decision makers. In practice, when very complex decisions must be made and particularly in a group, it may be useful to make them explicit, to prevent the criteria from being manipulated when analyzing the options to favor one or another optimal solution option.

Define the priority to address the problem

The definition of priority is based on the impact and urgency to address and resolve the problem. That is, the impact describes the potential to which it is vulnerable, and the urgency shows the available time that is counted to avoid or at least reduce this impact.

Generate solution options

It consists of developing different possible solutions to the problem. Although it is not possible in most cases to know all the possible paths that can be taken to solve the problem, the more options you have, the more likely it is to find one that is satisfactory.

In any case, the development of an exaggerated number of options can make the choice extremely difficult, and therefore it is not necessarily favorable to continue developing options indefinitely.

To generate a large number of options, a significant amount of creativity is necessary. There are different techniques to enhance creativity, such as brainstorming, forced relationships, etc.

At this stage, the creativity of decision makers is important.

Evaluate options

It consists of making a detailed study of each of the possible solutions that were generated for the problem, that is, looking at their advantages and disadvantages, individually with respect to the decision criteria, and one with respect to the other, assigning them a weighted value.

As explained before, depending on the contexts in which the decision is made, this evaluation will be more or less accurate.

There are tools, particularly for business administration to evaluate different options, which are known as quantitative methods.

At this stage of the process, critical analysis is important as a quality of the decision maker.

Selection of the best option

In this step, the option is chosen that, according to the evaluation, will obtain the best results for the problem.

There are techniques (for example, hierarchical decision analysis) that help us evaluate multiple criteria.

The following terms can help you make the decision depending on the result you are looking for:

Application of the decision

Implement the decision made in order to evaluate whether the decision was correct or not. Implementation will likely result in new, less important decisions being made.

Evaluation of the results

After implementing the decision, it is necessary to evaluate whether or not the problem was solved, that is, whether the decision is having the expected result or not.

If the result is not what was expected, you should look at whether it is because you should give yourself a little more time to obtain the results or if the decision was definitely not the right one. In this case, you should start the process again to find a new decision.

The new process that is started in case the solution has been wrong will have more information and there will be knowledge of the errors made in the first attempt.

In addition, one must be aware that these decision processes are constantly changing, that is, the decisions that are made continually will have to be modified due to the evolution of the system or the appearance of new variables that affect it.

Cognitive processes involved in decision making

As in critical thinking, certain cognitive processes are used in decision-making, such as:

The decision-making process uses information as raw material. This is essential, since without it it would not be possible to evaluate existing options or develop new options.

In organizations, which are constantly subject to decision making, information takes on a fundamental role, and therefore has unmatched value.

To process the organization's data and transform it into information, the information system is essential, within which accounting is found.

In addition to information systems, there are systems specially designed to help navigate the decision-making process, which are known as decision support systems or decision support systems.

Cognitive biases are psychological phenomena, usually involuntary, that make information processing difficult and can lead to errors of varying degrees in decision-making. These thinking patterns can lead to systematic errors such as the following:.

Contenido

La indecisión se define como una falta de determinación ante una situación, es inseguridad, falta de carácter o valor. Es un trastorno que destruye la seguridad y que se vuelve un problema a la hora de decidir, es la incapacidad de elegir entre dos o más opciones, como por ejemplo, decidir qué ropa usar, qué menú escoger en un restaurante o simplemente decir no a lo que no se quiere hacer, todo ello por la falta de confianza en sí mismo.

Se puede considerar a la indecisión como falta de autonomía "Autonomía (filosofía y psicología)"), que impide a un individuo tomar una decisión, elegir algún camino entre varios, o resolver alguna problemática.

La ‘’indecisión’’ provoca hacer juicios prematuros sin tener la suficiente información requerida para procesarlo y agregando un valor ético y moral, muchas veces son inconscientes.

Al preocuparse de problemas que no están a nuestro alcance o que no podemos resolver, sólo podemos observar nuestra falta de capacidad, por lo cual entramos en bloqueos emocionales y conflictos para toma de decisiones. Teniendo en cuenta que lo más común para llegar a un bloqueo, son los miedos.

Dr. Jeffrey Z. Rubín (1986) identificó algunos factores que entorpecen la toma de decisiones:.

Highest frequency stage

According to studies, the most frequent stages of indecision are pre-adolescence and adolescence, as such, they are difficult stages in which young people find it difficult to decide in various aspects of their life; The elements that may influence are fear, anger, apathy, etc.

Pre-adolescence and adolescence are complicated because you want to stop being a child but, at the same time, continue being one and start being an adult, but you fear being one. It is the indecision of “Am I a child or am I an adult?”, “Who am I?”

Although it is worth mentioning that throughout our lives making decisions is quite a challenge. How many times have we been undecided, and when we arrive at an answer we realize that it was not as complicated as it seemed?

So in conclusion we can say that indecisions will always be present throughout our lives, but not as strong as in pre-adolescence and adolescence.

Cause

Some of the causes may be that the lack of confidence in one's own abilities to solve problems comes from within the family, that is, that given an authoritarian family environment, it means that children do not have optimal personal development, so they reach adulthood without knowing how to make decisions, the same thing happens in an over-protective environment where they practically solve the children's lives, affecting their own maturity.

The poor ability to make decisions is one of the problems that causes the most inconvenience when it comes to personal and professional development.

“The fear of taking the wrong path is often the reason why elections are not held and are always referred to another person who must exercise that responsibility.

Making decisions is a learning process that has a lot to do with one's own security and self-confidence, it has nothing to do with being right in what one decides to do or not do. “We all make mistakes, we must lose the fear of making mistakes to be able to choose without fear and thus be able to make decisions, whether good or bad.”[1]​.

The indecisive is the person who does not decide to execute an action, nor to select a strategy, does not orient himself to a certain direction, renouncing others, does not dare to solve problems. Each decision commits us and ultimately what the undecided person fears is commitment "Commitment (Right)"), they are not willing to pay the cost of their decisions, they do not want to take the risk of losing.

There are those who find it difficult to choose because they are insecure and perfectionist personalities and those who exaggeratedly cannot make any decision, no matter how small it may be. The magnitude of indecision takes on its greatest measure when the person feels seriously overwhelmed by the slightest choice they have to make, generally due to the obsessive fear of making a mistake. This disorder also includes in many cases a state of estrangement that gives them the sensation of being dominated by another. This feeling of submission to the will of another hinders their way of speaking, their thoughts, their ideas, their identity. As a defense, these people can live in a hurry, eat and speak quickly.

Generalmente, escondemos nuestras emociones, sentimientos, anhelos, inquietudes tras la máscara de la represión con la que nos obligamos a tomar la decisión más costosa, que es el no tomar una decisión, para así simular que no somos responsables de las consecuencias y eludimos el efecto creado, si es negativo el resultado lo desconocemos, y si fuera positivo le damos crédito a la suerte y en tantas ocasiones a alguna divinidad. El conflicto que se tiene en el momento de tomar una decisión suele desarrollarse en diferentes circunstancias como:.

The mood

Moments of sadness, anxiety, fear, euphoria "Euphoria (state)") and any other, alter the level of perception of a specific reality, and any decision is determined by the emotional state of the moment, it would be better to look for a moment of tranquility to choose more wisely.

The importance of the situation

In these situations, a large amount of stress is handled, and even more so if the options are unknown, which causes an emotional imbalance.

The fear of change

There has been talk of the state of comfort, in which the individual prefers to be in a conformist situation before deciding to change, for fear of the consequences that taking a step forward may bring.

Multiple options to take

In this situation the individual does not decide on any option, possibly wanting everything for himself. Selfishness is another side of indecision, since by wanting to have it all it assumes that all options are included and discards all decisions and sacrifices. "He who serves two masters with one looks bad, and if he serves everyone he runs out of energy."

Low self-esteem

When there is low self-esteem or ignorance of the most basic rights of the human being, the individual is susceptible to being influenced by other people who find it convenient to take advantage of them, since they are manipulated in their decision-making.

Inability to live in the here and now, despising what you have, constantly longing for what you don't have, despising what you do, leads to eternal waiting, that perpetual blindness, giving no option to choose because it is still an illusion.

It usually happens in people raised under a strict and authoritarian parenting pattern by their parents.

Partiendo de las definiciones de Hellriegel"), Slocum") (2004) y Stoner, (2003), la toma de decisiones es una parte importante de la labor del gerente. Sin embargo, cuando un gerente toma una decisión o cuando el coste de buscar y evaluar las alternativas es bajo, el modelo racional proporciona una descripción moderadamente precisa del proceso de decisión. Pero tales situaciones, afirma Robbins (1999), son la excepción. En el ámbito organizacional, la mayoría de las decisiones significativas se realizan mediante el juicio, más que por un modelo prescriptivo definido.

Dado lo anterior, a continuación se establece una visión de cómo se toman realmente la mayoría de las decisiones en las organizaciones, a través de la caracterización de tres modelos de toma de decisión de acuerdo con los criterios establecidos McLeod (2000): el racional, el de racionalidad limitada y el político.

La utilidad de estos modelos reside en que ayudan a identificar la complejidad y variedad de las situaciones para la toma de decisiones en una organización.

En las organizaciones en general y en las empresas en particular suele existir una jerarquía que determina el tipo de acciones que se realizan dentro de ella y, en consecuencia, el tipo de decisiones que se deben tomar, la Ciencia administrativa divide a la empresa en 3 niveles jerárquicos:.

Conforme se sube en la jerarquía de una organización, la capacidad para tomar decisiones no programadas o no estructuradas adquiere más importancia, ya que son este tipo de decisiones las que atañen a esos niveles. Por tanto, la mayor parte de los programas para el desarrollo de gerentes pretenden mejorar sus habilidades para tomar decisiones no programadas, por regla general enseñándoles a analizar los problemas en forma sistemática y a tomar decisiones lógicas.

A medida que se baja en esta jerarquía, las tareas que se desempeñan son cada vez más rutinarias, por lo que las decisiones en estos niveles serán más estructuradas (programadas).

Adicionalmente, una organización también estará dividida en varias secciones funcionales, son varias las propuestas de división que se han planteado para una empresa de forma genérica, aunque la más aceptada es la que considera los siguientes departamentos o unidades funcionales:.

Las decisiones también serán diferentes, en función de en qué unidad funcional o departamento tengan lugar.

Rational Model

The rational model: pursues the constitution of a process of choosing between alternatives to maximize the benefits of the organization. It includes a broad definition of the problem, extensive collection and analysis of data, as well as a careful evaluation of alternatives.

Andreu, in the year (2001), states that the criteria for evaluating alternatives are well known and assumes that the generation and exchange of information between individuals is objective and precise. Therefore, the rational decision-making model is based on 3 explicit assumptions:

This model has an implicit assumption, says McLeod (2000), “There are no ethical dilemmas in the decision-making process.” Furthermore, from an organizational point of view there are some limitations to this model:

In summary, it can be suggested that the rational model be used to the extent that it is feasible, without expecting it to be the only or even the main guide in making many organizational decisions.

Bounded rationality model

The Bounded Rationality Model: describes the limitations of rationality and reveals the decision-making processes frequently used by people and teams. This model explains why different people or teams make different decisions when they have exactly the same information.

Thus, the limited rationality model reflects individual or team tendencies to:.

The decision rules from the organizational perspective, according to McLeod (2000), are a part of the limited rationality model. That is, it provides quick and easy ways to reach a decision without detailed analysis and searches. They are written and applied easily. However, its main disadvantage is that it is based on making decisions by building simplified models that extract the essential characteristics of the problems, without capturing all their complexity.

Political Model

The Political Model: describes people's decision-making to satisfy their own interests. Preferences based on selfish personal goals rarely change as new information is acquired. Therefore, the definition of problems, the search and collection of data, the exchange of information and the evaluation criteria are only methods used to bias the result in favor of the decision maker.

Decisions reflect, according to Laudon (2002), the distribution of power in the organization and the effectiveness of the tactics used by managers and employees, determine the impact of the decisions.

The political model predominates in organizations around the world, that is, it prevails over the two models described above because it is the basis of the organizational procedures established by senior management.

From the perspective of management practice, the political model is expressed very vividly in organizations through the use of various methods of influence, means by which individuals or groups try to exercise power or influence the behavior of others.

Now, all decisions are based on the information available, which allows establishing a criterion based on alternative solutions to the same problem. Given this, management, for the purposes of organizational decision-making, makes use of information systems supported by installed information technology, which generate relevant business information, which according to the hierarchical structure establishes priorities for its application.

Todas las personas que toman una decisión poseen una serie única de características personales que influyen en su resolución del problema. Por ejemplo, en una empresa, el gerente creativo tolerará bien la incertidumbre y ofrecerá diversas alternativas para su decisión en un menor tiempo. La toma de decisiones es el proceso mediante el cual se realiza una elección entre las opciones o formas para resolver diferentes situaciones de la vida en diferentes contextos: a nivel laboral, familiar, personal, sentimental o empresarial (utilizando metodologías cuantitativas que brinda la administración). La toma de decisiones consiste, básicamente, en elegir una opción entre las disponibles para resolver un problema actual o potencial (aun cuando no se evidencie un conflicto latente).

En términos básicos según Herman hesse y Slocum (2004), la toma de decisiones es el “proceso de definición de problemas, recopilación de datos, generación de alternativas y selección de un curso de acción”.

Por su parte, Stoner, (2003) define la toma de decisiones como “el proceso para identificar y solucionar un curso de acción para resolver un problema específico”.

La toma de decisiones a nivel individual se caracteriza por el hecho de que una persona haga uso de su razonamiento y pensamiento para elegir una solución a un problema que se le presente en la vida; es decir, si una persona tiene un problema, deberá ser capaz de resolverlo individualmente tomando decisiones con ese específico motivo.

En la toma de decisiones importa la elección de un camino a seguir, por lo que en una etapa anterior deben evaluarse alternativas de acción. Si estas últimas no están presentes, no existirá decisión. Para tomar una decisión, cualquiera que sea su naturaleza, es necesario conocer, comprender, analizar un problema, para así poder darle solución. En algunos casos, por ser tan simples y cotidianos, este proceso se realiza de forma implícita y se soluciona muy rápidamente, pero existen otros casos en los cuales las consecuencias de una mala o buena elección pueden repercutir en la vida y si es en un contexto laboral en el éxito o fracaso de la organización, para los cuales es necesario realizar un proceso más estructurado que puede dar más seguridad e información para resolver el problema, evaluándolas de un modo diferente al de otro gerente con una personalidad más conservadora y menos propenso a aceptar riesgos. Teniendo en cuenta esta información, los investigadores han tratado de identificar los diferentes estilos para tomar decisiones.

El supuesto básico del modelo de la toma de decisiones reside en reconocer que las personas difieren en dos dimensiones:.

La primera es la forma de pensar. A la hora de tomar una decisión, hay personas que lo hacen con una mayor lógica y racionalidad, procesando la información de forma secuencial. Sin embargo, otras personas se enfrentan a este proceso de forma más creativa e intuitiva, contemplando una perspectiva más amplia.

La segunda dimensión hacer referencia a la tolerancia a la ambigüedad que toleran las personas. En aquellas situaciones donde el individuo, para tomar la decisión, requiera de mucha coherencia y orden en la información, el grado de tolerancia a la ambigüedad es mínimo. En contraposición, en aquellas personas capaces de procesar multitud de información al mismo tiempo, asumiendo con ello un importante grado de incertidumbre, la tolerancia a la ambigüedad es elevada.

Teniendo en cuenta estas dos dimensiones, Stephen P. Robbins (Supervision Today, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1995) desarrolló un diagrama donde aparecen los cuatro estilos para la toma de decisiones.

Management style

The managerial decision-making style is characterized by a low tolerance for ambiguity and a totally rational way of thinking. In this style are those people with a high degree of logical reasoning, capable of making quick decisions, focused on the short term. Its effectiveness and speed in decision-making allows a solution to be adopted with minimal information and evaluating few alternatives.

Analytical style

The analytical decision-making style is characterized by a greater tolerance for ambiguity than managerial types, combined with a completely rational way of thinking. These people need more information before making a decision, considering and analyzing more alternatives. Individuals situated in this analytical style are characterized by their ability to adapt or face unique situations.

Conceptual style

The conceptual decision-making style encompasses people with a high tolerance for ambiguity and an intuitive way of thinking. These people are characterized by having a broad capacity to process information from a broad perspective and a high analytical capacity, trying to analyze many alternatives. They focus on the long term and often look for creative solutions to problems.

Behavioral style

The behavioral style represents those people whose way of thinking is intuitive but whose degree of tolerance for ambiguity is low. These people work well with others, are open to suggestions, and care about those who work with them. Acceptance from others is important for those of this decision-making style.

The four decision-making styles could be considered independent of each other. However, it is easy to detect that decision making is the process by which a choice is made between options or ways to resolve different life situations in different contexts: at work, family, personal, sentimental or business level (using quantitative methodologies provided by the administration). Decision making basically consists of choosing an option among those available to resolve a current or potential problem (even when a latent conflict is not evident).

In basic terms according to Hellriegel and Slocum (2004) it is the “process of defining problems, collecting data, generating alternatives and selecting a course of action.”

For its part, Stoner (2003) defines decision making as “the process of identifying and solving a course of action to solve a specific problem.”

Decision making at the individual level is characterized by the fact that a person uses their reasoning and thinking to choose a solution to a problem that arises in life; That is, if a person has a problem, they must be able to solve it individually by making decisions for that specific reason.

In decision-making, the choice of a path to follow is important, so alternatives for action must be evaluated at an earlier stage. If the latter are not present, there will be no decision. To make a decision, whatever its nature, it is necessary to know, understand, and analyze a problem, in order to be able to solve it. In some cases, because they are so simple and everyday, this process is carried out implicitly and is solved very quickly, but there are other cases in which the consequences of a bad or good choice can have repercussions on life and, if it is in a work context, on the success or failure of the organization, for which it is necessary to carry out a more structured process that can provide more security and information to resolve the problem. The individual with a dominant style would benefit from having characteristics of the other three styles as possible alternatives for a better resolution to a specific situation.

Decision making is defined as a cognitive process in which a choice is made between possible alternatives, even when it is only one possible alternative there is another potential: “inaction”, not acting.

Las situaciones, ambientes o contextos en los cuales se toman las decisiones se pueden clasificar según el conocimiento y control que se tenga sobre las variables que intervienen o influencian el problema, ya que la decisión final o la solución que se tome va a estar condicionada por dichas variables.

Certainty environment

In this context, there is complete knowledge about the problem (exact, measurable and reliable information about the result of each of the alternatives considered), and the solution options that are proposed will always cause known and invariable results. When making the decision, you should only think about the option that generates the greatest benefit.

In an environment of certainty or certainty, individuals have full information about the problem, the alternative solutions are obvious and the possible results of each decision are clear. Under these conditions, individuals can foresee and even control events and results by having adequate knowledge and a clear definition of both the problem and the alternative solutions. In this context, decision making is relatively easy. The decision maker chooses the solution that provides the best potential result. However, we must not forget that a problem can have many possible solutions, and calculating the expected results of all of them can be extremely slow and expensive.

For example, the purchasing agent of a printing company has to decide on several paper suppliers in order to obtain standard quality paper at a lower price and better service. In this situation, the purchasing manager will have information about the different distributors and will only have to carefully study the possible alternatives until he achieves his objective.

Risk environment

Risk could be defined as the probability of an adverse event, impact or consequence occurring. In the decision-making process under risk, the decision-maker has complete information to solve the problem, that is, he has knowledge of it, he knows the possible solutions, but he is not able to diagnose with certainty the result of any alternative, even if he has enough information to foresee the probability that it will lead us to a desired state of affairs.

In this type of decision, the possible solution options have a certain known probability of generating an outcome. In these cases, mathematical models can be used or the decision-maker can also use objective or subjective probability to estimate the possible result.

Objective probability is the possibility of a result occurring based on specific facts, it can be figures from previous years or studies carried out for this purpose. In subjective probability, the result is determined based on the personal and individual opinions and judgments of each person.

The main decision criteria used on decision tables in a risk environment are:

Uncertain environment

There is deficient information to make the decision, there is no control over the situation, it is not known how it can vary or the interaction of the variables of the problem, different solution options can be proposed but probability cannot be assigned to the results they yield. For this reason, it is called "uncertainty without probability."

Based on the above, there are two kinds of uncertainty:

La separación del proceso en etapas puede ser tan resumida o tan extensa como se desee, pero podemos identificar principalmente las siguientes etapas:.

Identify and analyze the problem

This stage consists of understanding the current condition and visualizing the desired condition, that is, finding the problem and recognizing that a decision must be made to reach its solution. The problem can be current, because there is a gap between the actual present condition and the desired one, or potential, because it is estimated that said gap will exist in the future.

When identifying the problem, it is necessary to have a clear and objective vision, and to be very clear about the term alterity, that is, to listen to the ideologies of others in order to formulate a possible collective solution to the problem.

For this, the formulation of the initial question is essential, as it constitutes the starting point of any decision.

The business world is overwhelmed by an infinite number of decisions that must be made at every moment and that, to a large extent, will determine the direction that companies take. In this way, the information obtained must be rich, varied and relevant, while it must come from various sources and through different forms (verbal, statistics, data, etc.).

And within this area, quantitative methods become some of the most reliable tools when it comes to basing a decision thanks to their ability to manage, process and analyze data quickly and effectively.

Identify the decision criteria and weigh them

See also criterion.

It consists of identifying those aspects that are relevant when making the decision, that is, those guidelines on which the decision made depends.

Weighting is assigning a value relative to the importance of each criterion in the decision made, since they are all important but not in the same way.

Many times, the identification of criteria is not done consciously prior to the following stages, but rather decisions are made without making them explicit, based on the personal experience of the decision makers. In practice, when very complex decisions must be made and particularly in a group, it may be useful to make them explicit, to prevent the criteria from being manipulated when analyzing the options to favor one or another optimal solution option.

Define the priority to address the problem

The definition of priority is based on the impact and urgency to address and resolve the problem. That is, the impact describes the potential to which it is vulnerable, and the urgency shows the available time that is counted to avoid or at least reduce this impact.

Generate solution options

It consists of developing different possible solutions to the problem. Although it is not possible in most cases to know all the possible paths that can be taken to solve the problem, the more options you have, the more likely it is to find one that is satisfactory.

In any case, the development of an exaggerated number of options can make the choice extremely difficult, and therefore it is not necessarily favorable to continue developing options indefinitely.

To generate a large number of options, a significant amount of creativity is necessary. There are different techniques to enhance creativity, such as brainstorming, forced relationships, etc.

At this stage, the creativity of decision makers is important.

Evaluate options

It consists of making a detailed study of each of the possible solutions that were generated for the problem, that is, looking at their advantages and disadvantages, individually with respect to the decision criteria, and one with respect to the other, assigning them a weighted value.

As explained before, depending on the contexts in which the decision is made, this evaluation will be more or less accurate.

There are tools, particularly for business administration to evaluate different options, which are known as quantitative methods.

At this stage of the process, critical analysis is important as a quality of the decision maker.

Selection of the best option

In this step, the option is chosen that, according to the evaluation, will obtain the best results for the problem.

There are techniques (for example, hierarchical decision analysis) that help us evaluate multiple criteria.

The following terms can help you make the decision depending on the result you are looking for:

Application of the decision

Implement the decision made in order to evaluate whether the decision was correct or not. Implementation will likely result in new, less important decisions being made.

Evaluation of the results

After implementing the decision, it is necessary to evaluate whether or not the problem was solved, that is, whether the decision is having the expected result or not.

If the result is not what was expected, you should look at whether it is because you should give yourself a little more time to obtain the results or if the decision was definitely not the right one. In this case, you should start the process again to find a new decision.

The new process that is started in case the solution has been wrong will have more information and there will be knowledge of the errors made in the first attempt.

In addition, one must be aware that these decision processes are constantly changing, that is, the decisions that are made continually will have to be modified due to the evolution of the system or the appearance of new variables that affect it.

Cognitive processes involved in decision making

As in critical thinking, certain cognitive processes are used in decision-making, such as:

The decision-making process uses information as raw material. This is essential, since without it it would not be possible to evaluate existing options or develop new options.

In organizations, which are constantly subject to decision making, information takes on a fundamental role, and therefore has unmatched value.

To process the organization's data and transform it into information, the information system is essential, within which accounting is found.

In addition to information systems, there are systems specially designed to help navigate the decision-making process, which are known as decision support systems or decision support systems.

Cognitive biases are psychological phenomena, usually involuntary, that make information processing difficult and can lead to errors of varying degrees in decision-making. These thinking patterns can lead to systematic errors such as the following:.