Final Report on the
Executive Decision-Making Skills Project
This report is of work contracted by the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand on 6 October 1998, and subsequently amended. The work was funded by the Open Polytechnic’s Research Grants Committee, budget code CERSH R&D 98010[1].
The project undertaken went from May 1998 until 24 December 1999 and was based at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, Hutt City, New Zealand.
I wish to thank the management of the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand, particularly Dr Paul Sutcliffe and Dr Ann Smith for their management of the Memorandum. There have been adjustments to it as the project proceeded and these were achieved in a very professional manner and have advanced the project. Linda Sissons and Amanda McMurdo were also helpful in the establishment of the contract, whilst Bev Harniss did the production work most efficiently and accurately. Michael Jameson provided useful critiques as the project proceeded.
Chris Burns has been the project’s evaluator and he has carried out his various tasks most professionally. I am grateful to him for his many insights and his willingness to work above-and-beyond the call of duty.
As required in the Memorandum, the report is in four parts:
a) the development of the model of decision-making (more technical account of issues, structural form and content of model)
b) the two trials conducted
c) the model itself (outline of the final form of the model)
d) the project as a whole (earlier work, purpose of the current project, methodology, evaluation, wider conclusions about the course developed)
The course discussed in this report consists of:
1 An initial half-day session when six participants complete a case study of decision-making and prepare to produce their own case studies drawing upon files in their own organisations. The participants receive a booklet that describes the objectives for the course and for the initial half-day. They also receive a booklet that is the case study of decision-making, but they are expected to return this to the course director at the completion of the half-day session.
2 A three-day workshop during which each participant has half-a-day to present their case study and the course director introduces a model of decision-making and has the participants practice using that model. The participants receive a booklet that contains the model of decision-making and some material on the use of the model.
The general purpose of the model of decision-making is to provide a structure in which the various aspects of decisions may be examined and conclusions drawn. This means, the logical components that are brought together to construct a decision must be extant and there must be an account of how a decision-maker is to consider these components together.
This model is about the inputs to the decisions themselves. It is, thus, essentially philosophical in its nature. The decisions made are ethical judgements. The intellectual discipline in which we must work is ethics. In relation to the model itself, no attempt is made to consider the psychology or sociology of decision-making.
This approach may appear overly abstract or philosophical but its legitimacy, and its efficacy, are based upon our experience with practical managers. People who take decisions do use the components that we have built into the model. In addition, research in 1984 and 1999 shows that managers do believe that by using the model they can improve the quality of decisions[2]. Consequently, the empirical work undertaken in the trials is essential and the model produced is going to be relevant only to persons in circumstances largely similar to those who provided the information in the empirical development of the model.
The model developed was considerably influenced by the work of John Wilson and the Warborough Trust unit at Oxford University[3]. They set out to establish a base from which empirical researchers in the area of morality may work. This entailed saying in detail what was logically involved when a moral decision is made by practical people. The starting point is to define the “moral area”. Wilson separates out the content of morality from the structure of moral decision-making. In the development of our model of decision-making, we have built upon the same distinction. The components of the model we develop are universal, but the specific questions that we provide as examples of what might be considered in accord with each component, are dependent on the particular decisions being made.
The logical components of moral decision-making may also be derived from Davis[4] and Rawls[5]. Davis brings to our attention the central role of rules. Rules in the sense of moral principles will be a part of all human moral decision-making. However, in the case of executive decision-making, rules appear as formal and extremely context bound ethical statements. It is the existence of rules that (1) separates policy development from policy implementation, and (2) establishes the concept of discretion, and (3) establishes the reality of discretion when executives make policy implementation decisions.
Rawls’ work also indicates the structure of ethical decision-making we have adopted, but his focus is on the centrality of ethical concepts in practical decision-making. Rawls backs “justice” as a prime moral concept but when developing our model of decision-making we have (following Wilson) been careful not to advance any particular moral principle. Our model is not normative or prescriptive. However, we cannot claim that it is free from moral statements. We have, in the content part of the model (the questions) referred to those moral principles that were suggested by the participants in the trials. They are always cast as questions, or principles that might prompt thought. The selection of the principles to be included may be described as eclectic in the widest sense of “eclectic” for they do not direct those who use the model down any particular line of moral reasoning.
In addition, those who conduct courses using the model should be careful not to advocate for any particular moral principle. Course participants bring their own principles to courses, and the course director should adopt the role of the critic, particularly offering counter examples and alternative moral principles. This is consistent with the sophistication of the course participants and the principles of adult education.
1984 version of the model
In 1984 the components of the model, derived from theory, and confirmed structurally through 9 trials with public and private sector managers, were: legality (rules), morality, facts of the case, just procedures, possible decisions. To these were added the implications or effects of decisions, and strategies that might be taken to implement decisions[6].
The model at that time was called “Administrative Discretionary Justice” (ADJ). The justification of this name is found in the model itself, which is included in an appendix to the present report[7]. The final form of the model from the 1984 project was:
“Definition of Administrative Discretionary Justice: the resolution of the legal, ethical and practical issues which arise in a situation where an official acting in a capacity which is, in the final analysis, defined and limited by government legislation, or organisational policy, makes a just decision which results in action or inaction which affects other persons.
The model (ADJ) is made up of Components. In. order for an official to address an administrative decision adequately the following Components seem to be logically required:
CONDITIONS
The CONDITIONS of ADJ are those criteria which must be satisfied if the model is to be applied.
FACTS
The FACTS of ADJ are the circumstances, constraints, relevant personal information, and the likely consequences of particular decisions, which, when taken together, describe a particular case. Consideration of the veracity of facts and the absence of information falls within this Component.
RULES
The written rules, including precedents, which are relevant to or "govern" a decision, together with the guidelines intended to preserve the integrity of the decision-making process, are the RULES of ADJ.
MORALITY
The MORALITY of ADJ requires the consideration of 2 issues. First, the moral principles which are held by the organisation or the decision-maker to be potentially relevant in any application of ADJ. Second, the persons or parties affected (together with an account of how they are affected) by a potential decision.
OPTIONS
OPTIONS are taken in accordance with the strategy suggested by the model of ADJ when all the Components of ADJ are systematically considered and taken into account in reaching conclusions.
IMPLICATIONS
The tasks within the IMPLICATIONS Component of ADJ are a consideration of those matters that may affect the implementation of the decision once it is made, and the development of practical proposals to assist with its implementation.”[8]
The above model was the starting point for the present project. Its logical structure was kept intact but the content (questions) were immediately altered to make the wording more modern and to remove any references to statutes or persons’ positions that were no longer current[9].
In the 1999 review, aspects of the logic of the model and the presentation of certain components emerged as considerations[10]. The logic of the model was not adequate in the Implications component. The component had always been a mixture of ideas linked only by their temporal position. The ideas were about the effects of particular decisions and strategies to implement decisions. The “effects of decisions” here is to be interpreted as the range of possible consequences that should be considered. But, although the consequences are things that occur after the decision, they are things that should be considered before the decision is made. With the participants in the two course trials it became clear that managers today use the word ‘risk” to refer to such contingencies. It also became clearer that the “strategies of implementation” idea, although a practical and worthwhile consideration in many decisions, was not correctly placed in the Implementations component. The “ strategies of implementation” idea also relates to something that is temporally after the decision, but it is something that needs to be considered at the time the decision is taken. We found in cases where the “strategies” were prominent that they were really examples of other decision-making components. The other components were mainly facts and morality, with rules having a much lesser role. Hence, it was decided to bring the “strategies” notion into the model in the content (questions) area for both facts and morality.