1. Dr. Len Elovitz Chapter 9 in Owens & Valesky
Decision Making
Dr. Len Elovitz
Chapter 9 in Owens & Valesky

2. Total Quality Management
TQM is a management approach for an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to all members of the organization and to society

3. Dr. W. Edwards Deming
WWII - trained American managers for war production
Brought to Japan by MacArthur in 1950
Brought TQM back to the US as a consultant

4. Deming’s 14 points
(1) Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service.
(2) Adopt the new (Deming) philosophy.
(3) Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality.
(4) End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price alone.
(5) Improve constantly and forever every process.

5. Deming’s 14 points (6) Institute training on the job.
(7) Adopt and institute leadership.
(8) Drive out fear.
(9) Break down barriers between staff areas.
(10) Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the staff
(11) Eliminate numerical quotas for the staff and goals for management.

6. Deming’s 14 points
(12) Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship.
(13) Institute a vigorous program of education and self improvement for everyone.
(14) Put everybody in the organization to work to accomplish the transformation.

7. William Glasser The Quality School
Deming’s Basics
Managing without Coercion
Eliminate all threats & fears
Principals and teachers must be friends
Principals must treat teachers well
Emphasizing Quality
Reference is mostly toward teachers providing meaningful work for students
Students Evaluate Their Work

8. The Quality Revolution in Education
John Jay Bonstingl

9.   Doyle and Kearns (1983)
The modem school should look less like a factory and more like our best high-tech companies with lean structures, flat organizations, and decision making pushed to the lowest possible level ... [with] fewer middle managers, and those that remain act(ing) less like controllers and more like colleagues and collaborators
Under TQM, the traditional bureaucratic organization must be practically transformed into a new one. It must become a flat organization with lean structures and a decision making process different from the one in bureaucratic organizations

10. Doyle and Kearns' observation about simplifying the organizational structure is supported by Peters and Waterman, authors of In Search of Excellence (1982), who indicate that excellent companies have simple organizational structures and lean staffs. Bosting (1992) observes that, "Bureaucracies are being sculptured and hierarchies flattened to give more control over quality to those on the front lines". The message for the educational administrator can be summarized with the KISS philosophy: "Keep it simple, stupid."

11. In terms of the decision making process, TQM emphasizes involving people in the organization in decision making. Hemlock (1992) suggests that in the better firms, managers involve everyone in the decision making process. TQM implies a participatory managerial approach as opposed to the bureaucratic decisions made by top administrators and imposed upon the employees. The message for the educational administrator is that decisions should not be unilateral and much less imposed upon subordinates.

12. Doyle and Kearns indicate that managers should be colleagues and collaborators. This is the idea of "teamwork" which is central to TQM. Marchese (1991) observes that "Unlike committees, teams aren't representative-, they bring together most or all of the people who work in a process to work on its improvement, no others need apply... It believes in the superiority of collaborative work that achieves "team learning". Teamwork also leads to what Senge (1990) refers to as "organizational learning.

13. Organizations must become places where people expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together.    The message is that managers department heads, supervisors, or other administrative personnel should not act as feudal lords, owners of lives and property of those who work for them. There are no bosses in a TQM organization but collaborators. Deming's idea is that there should be collaboration and cooperation for the achievement of quality.

14. Some Recommendations
1.Empowering people; Marchese (1991) advises, "Stop attacking people"... drive out fear; from the work place. Marchese further observes that, "TQM empowers people by trusting our employees... to act responsibly and giving them appropriate authority;
"2.Showing respect and concern for everyone no matter what that person does in that organization;

15. 3.Creating a nonthreatening atmosphere, that is, establishing a psychological climate that is conducive to security and learning-4.Keeping in mind that people are more important than procedures and structures. Groff (199 1) indicates that people are the most valuable resource any organization has;
5.Exercising transformational more than transactional leadership;
6.Motivating and rewarding people for their contributions;
7.Sharing rather than imposing decisions on people;
8.Communicating as opposed to hiding information to exercise control;
9.Practicing what is preached.

16. The message is that implementing TQM means a change, a radical change, in administrative style as well as in attitude. The administrative style described by McGregor in theory X, and which many administrators still utilize, contradicts the TQM philosophy. If the administrator is not willing to modify his or her managerial style, then TQM should not be implemented.

17. Advocates of TQM indicate that in order to implement this managerial philosophy, fewer managers at least of the old type-powerful figures in sole command of vertical authority structures, are needed. Instead, they want leaders, vision givers, listeners, team-workers, orchestrators and enablers of people-driven improvement. It seems there is not much place under TQM for the traditional, authoritarian, inflexible, type of administrator. This TQM message is crystal clear.

18. Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007
Decision Making
Decision Making is at the heart of organizational effectiveness, climate, and health.
Two dominant issues affect how decisions are made in organizations;
Stability (application of existing practices and maintenance of existing performance levels)
Change (environmental demands for quick response and emerging problems that are ambiguous)
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19. Participative decision making structures are required to effectively manage change.
Empowering people to participate in important decisions is highly motivating to them
Broad participation infuses the decision-making process with the full spectrum of knowledge and good ideas that people throughout the organization have to contribute

20. Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007
Decision Making
Daniel Griffith’s Theory of Leadership is About Decision Making
Administration is decision making
Organization’s structure is determined by the nature of its decision making process
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21. Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007
Griffith (continued)
An individual's rank equals his or her degree of control of the decision-making process.
Effectiveness of the leader is inversely proportional to the number of decisions made personally.
The major differences between types of organizations are related to differences in the decision-making process.
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22. Individual v. Organizational Decision Making
What is meant by the expectation that administrators should be “decisive”?
How is this different from “organizational decisions”?
It is the responsibility of administrators to establish decision-making processes that establish a positive culture.
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23. Rationality in Decision Making
Herbert Simon’s three phases of decision making:
Intelligence activity - gathering information regarding the need for a decision to be made
Design activity - alternatives are envisioned, developed and analyzed
Choice activity - selecting a course of action
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24. Peter Drucker’s rational steps in decision making:
Define the Problem
Analyze the Problem
Develop Alternative Solutions
Decide on the Best Solution
Convert decisions into Effective Actions

25. The above models assume that decision-making is an orderly, rational process that possesses an inner logic, and that
The steps in the process follow one another in an orderly, logical and sequential flow

26. Rational Decision-Making Models
Some models add a “feedback loop” to make successively better decisions eventually reaching “optimal” decisions.
We must recognize that we generally make decisions that are called “satisficing”, that is, they are a solution that is satisfactory, but not necessarily the optimal solution. Why?
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27. What are the possibilities for the roles of the leader and members of the organization for decision making?

28. Roles in Decision Making
Vroom and Yetton
Autocratic Process:
AI. Leaders makes decision with information available.
AII. Leader gets information from followers (may not tell them the problem) and then makes decision.
Consultative Process:
CI. Leader shares problem with individuals, gets suggestions, then makes decision.
CII. Leader shares problem with the group and then makes decision.
Group Process:
GI. Leaders facilitates a group decision based on consensus. The leader avoids giving his/her opinion, but lets the group decide.
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29. Who should be involved in the decision
Analysis of the situation depends on answers to 7 questions:
Does the problem possess a quality requirement? (i.e., time)
Does the leaders have sufficient information to make a good decision?
Is the problem structured?
Is it necessary for others to accept the decision in order for it to be implemented?’
If the leaders makes the decision alone, how certain is it that others will accept it?
Do others share the organizational goals that will be attained by solving this problem?
Are the preferred solutions to the problem likely to create conflict among others in the group?
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30. You’ve got to be kidding
Are you Kidding?

31. The Nature of Managerial and Administrative Work
Henry Mintzberg’s five propositions:
Administrators do a great deal of work, and do it at an unrelenting pace.
Administrators devote brief periods to many decisions that tend to be specific, well defined issues.
Administrators prefer to deal with active problems that are well defined and non-routine.
Administrators prefer verbal communications.
Administrators maintain working relationships with three principal groups: superiors, subordinates, and outsiders.
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32. Mintzberg (continued)
The work of administrators is taxing. He states: “The quantity of work to be done . . .during the day is substantial and the pace is unrelenting.”
An “unrelenting pace” is not an unvarying pace, but that there is always more work to do, and that administrators seldom stop thinking about their work.
Mintzberg’s work has been confirmed in studies done with school administrators.
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33. How Administrators Think
Do administrators apply rational (linear) decision making principles to decision making, and are they reflective about the decisions they make?
Perhaps, but Karl Weick believes that administrators’ thinking is woven into, and simultaneously occurs with, action.
Schön agrees, believing that decision making is an art, or trained intuition. That is, one learns through education and experience to see a complex system and to view a decision holistically.
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34. Influence of Organizational Culture on Decision Making
The norms, values, traditions, and beliefs of an organization shape decision making.
Weick believes that culture helps participants ascribe credibility to interpretations they make of their experiences.
Therefore, the culture represents significant thinking prior to action and is implicit in the decision making of administrators.
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35. Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007
Theory of Practice
The overlapping theories of many scholars provide the basis for HRD concepts: motivation, leadership, conflict management, decision making, and change.
Some cultures are more effective in implementing HRD concepts.
Together these HRD concepts constitute a theory of decision making, the centerpiece of which is participative methods or empowerment.
Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007

36. Participative Decision Making
Potential benefits:
Make better decisions
Enhance the growth and development of participants
Tannenbaum and Schmidt’s Model provides a range of potential decision making options for a leader and the organization. This ranges from the leader making the decision to a team making the decision within limits defined by organizational constraints.
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37. Participative or Democratic
Democratic decision making may involve a vote, with the majority winning.
As participation in decisions increases, teachers’ power and influence increase and principals’ power and influence decrease.
The leader should work with participants in the organization to establish a process for making decisions.
Participants should evaluate how the process is working and suggest changes for making the process better.
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38. Emergent and Discrete Problems
Discrete problems: elements are unambiguous, clear-cut and quantifiable; elements are readily separable; solution requires a logical sequence of acts by one person; and the boundaries of the problem are easily discernable.
Bus routes, purchasing
Emergent problems: ambiguous, uncertain and not easily quantifiable; elements are intertwined; solution requires coordination and interaction of many; the dimensions of the problem cannot be fully known until the process begins to unfold.
Curriculum adoption
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39. Administrators or experts can make decisions for discrete problems, while emergent problems are best made with open communication among those individuals who have information and who will be involved in implementing the decision.

40. Who Should Participate?:
Test of Relevance--when they have an important personal stake in the problem and their interest is high
Teaching methods and materials
Discipline
Curriculum
Organizing for instruction
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41. Test of Expertise–they can contribute competently to the solution.
Area of discipline English v. PE
Test of Jurisdiction—if a problem is in their jurisdiction or within their work domain allow participation, but if not, don’t allow them to decide as it may lead to frustration.

42. Chester Barnard
Zone of Indifference - Involving teachers in matters about which they don’t care
Zone of Sensitivity - Matters in which teachers have great personal interest over time
Zone of Ambivalence - Matters where teachers have some stake but not enough to make them concerned

43. Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007
Team Administration
Five techniques of team administration:
Discussion – Head decides
Information seeking – Head decides
Democratic-centralist – Head decides
Parliamentarian – Group decides (vote) winners and losers
Participant-determining – Group decides (consensus)
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44. Participation, however, requires a high level of skills, in particular training in the group process.
Trust building
Conflict management
Problem solving
Communications

45. A Paradigm for Decision Making
Using the four typical steps in the rational model of decision making, the administrator can choose to include others in any or all of the steps:
Defining the problem
Identifying possible alternative solutions
Predicting the consequences of each alternative
Choosing the alternative to follow
In other words, the administrator can make the decision alone, use their input to make the decision, or make a group decision.
Copyright (c) Allyn & Bacon 2007