Role of Decision making in planning process particularly in educational organization

INTRODUCTION

According to Kreitner (1966) decision making is a process of identifying and choosing an alternative course of action in a manner appropriate to the demand of the situation. The act of choosing implies that an alternative course of action must be weighed and weeded out.

Decision Making is the essence of the management process. Decisions are made to solve problems, tackling the situations, handling crises and resolving conflicts that are inevitable. Decision Making is at the core of planning. The Concept of decision making involves defining the problem, finding, comparing and choosing a course of action. It is a process or activity of choosing an appropriate course of action from several alternative courses. The term “decision making” has been defined as a process of judging various available options and narrowing down choices to a situation one. Decision making is a conscious and human process involving both individual and social phenomena based on factual and value premises which concludes with a choice of one behavioral activity from among one or more alternatives with the intention of moving towards a desired state of affairs (Taylor, 1984)

Educational planning process is the activity that allows the public authorities to orient educational development and identify priority interventions. After going through a major crisis of confidence in the 1980s, educational planning has undergone major transformation: it has become more participatory, more flexible, less technocratic, and more diverse. It has gone beyond what its main focus was for a long time planning infrastructures, increasing access, and increased efficiency to become more strategic and addressing a variety of key issues of the educational system, such as quality, inequality, and factors influencing demand for schooling.

How Does the Process Work?

Although the specific steps differ slightly from one institution to another and depend on which type of plan you're developing, there are general steps that should be taken in order to ensure a good result. The steps in the planning process are:

1.      Develop objectives

2.      Develop tasks to meet those objectives

3.      Determine resources needed to implement tasks

4.      Create a timeline

5.      Determine tracking and assessment method

6.      Finalize plan

7.      Distribute to all involved in the process

Educational organization has multiple meanings according to the field and setting in which it is being applied. In educational psychology, educational organization is organization within the scope of education. It deals with the theory of organization as it applies to education of the human mind. In school reform, educational organization is the way an educational system operates. Educational organization may also refer to nonprofit agencies providing educational services.

Role of Decision making in planning process particularly in educational organization

Decision making plays a definite role in the life, Decision making is used to achieve goals, to assess standards, and as an aid in attaining your desired quality of life. The decision made, reflects value hierarchy (Swanson, 1981). He further stated that decision making serves many different purposes in management. Decision making is used to set the goals and their priorities; to determine which resources should be used, or whether one resource will be used instead of another. The courses of action are resulted from the decision made. From the earlier decisions the habits and routines are followed on a regular basis.

1. Decision making plays a role by adopting the best course of action in carrying out a given task. When there are different ways of performing a task, it becomes necessary to find out the best way and that is what decision is all about. For example in educational organization the decision makers such as teachers and other stakeholders should  have necessities and best plans as well as tactics on how to foster educational objectives by putting some reasons and limitations with emphasis and motivation to the students.

2. Decision making plays a role by choosing the best method of doing any work, decision making ensure optimum use of the enterprise resources namely men, machine, material, money. Resources are always scarce and therefore, it is necessary to make a proper use of same. For example in education organization decision ensure the effectiveness use of school resources such as libraries and other learning and teaching materials

 3. Decision making helps to find solution to any problem in a work place. For example the problem of poor performance decision makers can find the solution on how to overcome the situation like provision of enough learning and teaching resources for both instructors and students.

4. Decision making helps to identify the best course of action in each given situation and there by promotes efficiency. In educational setting decision making identifies strategies that can be used to attain educational goals and ways to achieve those goals.

Generally, decision making involves several advantages such as management goals or targets cannot be achieved without proper decision making process, allows managers to process more information and correct one another’s errors and come up with good decision, increase commitment among decision makers in the successful implementation of decision made better understanding of decision rationale, team members understand the reason, improves the quality of decision because it is made up by people with different perspectives intellectual stimulation as well as to make a group of people to brainstorm and bring greater intellectual stimulation and creativity to decision making process than is usually possible with one person acting alone.

                

                                             REFERENCES

Kreitner, R. (1966). Introduction to decision maaking. Marshall: USA.

Simon, H. A. (1960). The new Science of Management Decisions.  New York : Haper and Row

                 Publishers.

Swanson, R. A. (1981). Models of Decision Making Systems Requirement. Fourth Edition. New

                York. Maemillar.

Taylor, R. N. (1984). Behavioral Decision Making. Scott. Foresman.