Group Decision-Making Vs Individual Decision Making

It has been an open question on whether group decision making is better than individual decision making. Suppose it were true that groups did not perform tasks as well as individuals. There would have been little motivation to form groups at all. Many vital economic, legal, political, and military choices are been created by groups. There's a limit to how much information any one individual can process, and a limit on how many perspectives one person can see. Many decisions need full group participation to explore the situation, provide input, and make a final choice. As one has probably seen, groups can often make better decisions than any one person operating on his or her own. This is one of the main reasons that good companies have boards,

During brainstorming, group members are encouraged to state their ideas, no matter how wild they may seem, while an appointed group member records all ideas for discussion. One major advantage of brainstorming is the enormous number of ideas that are generated from the technique. By having an open and free session, everyone can engage in the creation of ideas. This kind of atmosphere is not the usual “formal” situation, which often cramps people of their creativity. People feel good about themselves and the idea that they can contribute to the session. A major disadvantage of the technique is that it produces ideas without screening them. Although brainstorming may produce a wide variety of ideas, many of them may not be quality ideas. Effective solutions to problems usually have been screened, tested, and evaluated. For this reason brainstorming is often used only as the first step in an overall problem-solving

It ultimately depends upon the situation. If there is an emergency and a decision needs to be made quickly, individual decision making might be preferred. However, if one person does not have all the information and skills needed to make a decision, if implementing the decision will be difficult without the involvement of those who will be affected by the decision, and if time urgency is more modest, then group decision making may be more effective. When time is of the essence, a good decision is one that's made quickly. That doesn't usually happen with full team decision making. And when one or two people have the necessary expertise to make the decision, it doesn't make sense to involve the whole team – the experts provide most of the input and make the final choice