Subject areaProcess and organisation
Also known asdecision-making
Decision making is the activity of choosing between alternatives under uncertainty: gathering the information needed, weighing risks and consequences, reaching a choice and taking ownership of it.
It concerns the person who decides and the way an organisation distributes the power to decide.
The term differs from the decision-making process, which describes the stages through which a decision takes shape; decision making is its concrete exercise. When decision-making structures stay slower than the people doing the work, the gap shows: employees find their own solutions, as happens with shadow AI (the use of artificial intelligence tools the company has not authorised). This is why improving decision making often means clarifying who decides and with which data, before looking for new tools.
An example
The case below is constructed, because the term does not yet appear in the articles. The sales director of a packaging manufacturer must decide whether to enter a new market with incomplete data. Sound decision making sets a deadline for the decision, defines which information is enough and names who owns the choice, instead of waiting for data that will never arrive.
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Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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