Decision-Making Styles in the Workplace

• Main Authors: Silvia Raffaldi, Paola Iannello, Laura Vittani, Alessandro Antonietti
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2012-05-01
• Series: SAGE Open
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244012448082

Two procedures were adopted to assess decision-making styles in the workplace: (a) the administration of traditional standardized self-report questionnaires and (b) open-ended questions about the way respondents would take decisions in a critical business case. Seventy-four adults were given two questionnaires: the Preference for Intuition and Deliberation , which assesses “deliberative” or “intuitive” decision style, and the Style of Learning and Thinking , which assesses thinking styles as “left” (namely, analytical-systematic) or “right” (that is, global-intuitive). Participants were also presented with a business case that involved taking a decision. Responses to the business case were used to classify approaches to decision making as “analytical-systematic” or “global-intuitive.” Results showed that the questionnaires correlated consistently with scores from the business case, thus supporting the notion that the assessment of decision style through self-report questionnaires is reliable and valid.