1. Decision making implies choice: Decision making is choosing from among two or more alternative courses of action. Thus, it is the process of selection of one solution out of many available. For any business problem, alternative solutions are available. Managers have to consider these alternatives and select the best one for actual execution. Here, planners/ decision-makers have to consider the business environment available and select the promising alternative plan to deal with the business problem effectively. It is rightly said that “Decision-making is fundamentally choosing between the alternatives”. In decision-making, various alternatives are to be considered critically and the best one is to be selected. Here, the available business environment also needs careful consideration. The alternative selected may be correct or may not be correct. This will be decided in the future, as per the results available from the decision already taken. In short, decision-making is fundamentally a process of choosing between the alternatives (two or more) available. Moreover, in the decision-making process, information is collected; alternative solutions are decided and considered critically in order to find out the best solution among the available. Every problem can be solved by different methods. These are the alternatives and a decision-maker has to select one alternative which he considers as most appropriate. This clearly suggests that decision-making is basically/fundamentally choosing between the alternatives. The alternatives may be two or more. Out of such alternatives, the most suitable is to be selected for actual use. The manager needs capacity to select the best alternative. The benefits of correct decision-making will be available only when the best alternative is selected for actual use.
2. Continuous activity/process: Decision-making is a continuous and dynamic process. It pervades all organizational activity. Managers have to take decisions on various policy and administrative matters. It is a never ending activity in business management.
3. Mental/intellectual activity: Decision-making is a mental as well as intellectual activity/process and requires knowledge, skills, experience and maturity on the part of decision-maker. It is essentially a human activity.
4. Based on reliable information/feedback: Good decisions are always based on reliable information. The quality of decision-making at all levels of the Organisation can be improved with the support of an effective and efficient management information system (MIS).
5. Goal oriented process: Decision-making aims at providing a solution to a given problem/ difficulty before a business enterprise. It is a goal-oriented process and provides solutions to problems faced by a business unit.
6. Means and not the end: Decision-making is a means for solving a problem or for achieving a target/objective and not the end in itself.
7. Relates to specific problem: Decision-making is not identical with problem solving but it has its roots in a problem itself.
8. Time-consuming activity: Decision-making is a time-consuming activity as various aspects need careful consideration before taking final decision. For decision makers, various steps are required to be completed. This makes decision-making a time consuming activity.
9. Needs effective communication: Decision-taken needs to be communicated to all concerned parties for suitable follow-up actions. Decisions taken will remain on paper if they are not communicated to concerned persons. Following actions will not be possible in the absence of effective communication.
10. Pervasive process: Decision-making process is all pervasive. This means managers working at all levels have to take decisions on matters within their jurisdiction.
11. Responsible job: Decision-making is a responsible job as wrong decisions prove to be too costly to the Organisation. Decision-makers should be matured, experienced, knowledgeable and rational in their approach. Decision-making need not be treated as routing and casual activity. It is a delicate and responsible job.

Decision-making is an essential aspect of modern management. It is a primary function of management. A manager’s major job is sound/rational decision-making. He takes hundreds of decisions consciously and subconsciously. Decision-making is the key part of manager’s activities. Decisions are important as they determine both managerial and organizational actions. A decision may be defined as “a course of action which is consciously chosen from among a set of alternatives to achieve a desired result.” It represents a well-balanced judgment and a commitment to action.

It is rightly said that the first important function of management is to take decisions on problems and situations. Decision-making pervades all managerial actions. It is a continuous process. Decision-making is an indispensable component of the management process itself.

Mintzberg’s observations and research indicate that diverse manager activities can be organized into ten roles. For an important starting point, all ten rules are vested with formal authority over an organizational unit. From formal authority comes status, which leads to various interpersonal relations, and from these comes access to information, which, in turn, enables the manager to make decisions and strategies.

The ten roles are divided into three categories: interpersonal, informational, and decisional.

Interpersonal Roles

Three of the managers’ roles involve basic interpersonal relationships:

The figurehead role: Every manager must perform some duties of a ceremonial nature (e.g., the president greets the touring dignitaries, the sales manager takes an important customer to lunch). These activities are important to the smooth functioning of an organization.

The leader role: This role involves leadership directly (e.g., the manager is responsible for hiring an training his own staff). The leader role encompasses relationships with subordinates, including motivation, communication, and influence.

The liaison role: in this role the manager makes contacts inside and outside the organization with a wide range of people: subordinates, clients, business associates, government, trade organization officials, and so on.

Informational Roles

The processing of information is a key part of the manager’s job. Three roles describe the informational aspects of managerial work:

The monitor role: This role involves seeking current information from many sources. For example, the manager perpetually scans his environment for information, interrogates liaison contacts and subordinates and receives unsolicited information.

 The disseminator role: In their disseminator role, managers pass information to other, both inside and outside the organization.

The spokesperson role: In their spokesman role, managers send some of their information to people outside the organization about company policies, needs, actions, or plans.

Decisional Roles

The manager plays the major role in his unit’s decision-making system. Four roles describe the decisional aspects of managerial work:

The entrepreneur role: In his entrepreneur role,� managers search for improvement his unit to adopt it to changing conditions in the environment.

The disturbance handler role: This role involves responding to high-pressure disturbances. For example, manager must resolve conflicts among subordinates or between manager’s department and other departments.

The resource allocator role: In their resource� allocator role, managers make decisions about how to allocate people, budget, equipment, time and other resources to attain desired outcomes.

The negotiator role: The negotiations are duties of the manager’s job. These activities involve formal negotiations and bargaining to attain outcomes for the manager’s unit responsibility.

These ten roles are not easily separate: “No role can be pulled out of the framework and the job be left intact”. However, this description of managerial work should be important to managers: “…the managers’ effectiveness is significantly influenced by their insight into their own work” (L. Gulick).

As organizations continue to restructure to work teams, the need for training in conflict resolution will grow. Conflict arises from differences, and when individuals come together in teams, their differences in terms of power, values, and attitudes contribute to the creation of conflict.

To avoid the negative consequences that can result from disagreements, most methods of resolving conflict stress the importance of dealing with disputes quickly and openly. Conflict is not necessarily destructive; however, when managed properly, conflict can result in benefits for a team. Conflict arises from differences.

When individuals come together in work teams their differences in terms of power, values and attitudes, and social factors all contribute to the creation of conflict. It is often difficult to expose the sources of conflict. Conflict can arise from numerous sources within a team setting and generally falls into three categories: communication factors, structural factors and personal factors. Barriers to communication are among the most important factors and can be a major source of misunderstanding.

Communication barriers include poor listening skills; insufficient sharing of information; differences in interpretation and perception; and nonverbal cues being ignored or missed. Structural disagreements include the size of the organization, turnover rate, levels of participation, reward systems, and levels of interdependence among employees.

Personal factors include things such as an individual’s self-esteem, their personal goals, values and needs. In order for conflict to be dealt with successfully, managers and team members must understand its unpredictability and its impact on individuals and the team as a whole.

Conflict in work teams is not necessarily destructive, however conflict can lead to new ideas and approaches to organizational processes, and increased interest in dealing with problems.

Conflict, in this sense, can be considered positive, as it facilitates the surfacing of important issues and provides opportunities for people to develop their communication and interpersonal skills. Conflict becomes negative when it is left to escalate to the point where people begin to feel defeated and a combative climate of distrust and suspicion develops. Negative conflict can destroy a team quickly, and often arises from poor planning

Complaint systems (also known as a conflict management systems or internal conflict management systems or integrated conflict management systems[1]) are sets of procedures used in organizations to address complaints and resolve disputes. They are also known as dispute systems.

Complaint systems in the US have undergone several innovations especially since since about 1970 with the advent of extensive workplace regulation. Notably in many countries, conflictmanagement channels and systems have evolved from a major focus on labor-management relations to a much wider purview that includes unionized workers and also managers, non-union employees, professional staff, students, trainees, vendors, donors, customers etc.

There is a substantial early history of scholarly work on due process, and union and non-union grievance procedures within organizations. This work focused primarily on rights-based conflictresolution between unionized and non-union workers and their managers. Scholarly work has evolved to cover both a wider range of conflict management channels, and, also, a much wider range of disputants.

In the 1970s and 1980s much interest arose in the United States, in dealing with conflict informally as well as formally, and in learning from conflict and managing conflict. In contemporary language, these discussions centered on the "interests" of all who would consider themselves stake-holders in a given conflict—and on systems change—as well as resolving grievances.

These discussions led to questions of how to think about complaint systems and how to link different conflict management offices and processes within an organization. Papers began to appear about a systems approach for dealing with complaints—and all kinds of disputes—within organizations.

The concept of an integrated conflict management system was conceived and developed by Mary Rowe, in numerous articles in the 1980s and 1990′s. She saw the need to offer options for complainants and therefore a linked systems of choices within an organizational system.
The idea of a systems approach has endured well. In recent years however, there has been discussion as to whether conflict should be "managed" by the organization——or whether the goal is to understand, deal with and learn from conflict. There is also concern about practical and theoretical issues in "integrating" a system, with some observers preferring the idea of "coordinating" a conflict system.

There is also a major need to collect, review and understand the nature of conflict management and complaint systems around the world.

Studies and citations are needed about how complaint systems work for women as well as men. Research is needed as to how systems work for many different national groups, for people of different socio-economic classes, and different ages, and different religions, and especially for contract workers and immigrant workers, in every country. Studies (and citations) are needed about complaint systems in health care, in faith-based organizations, in schools, in political organizations, in the military and in many specialized occupations. Studies are needed about important specialized issues like free speech

” When people think about training, they just think about become wiser than others, but I think people get more smarter after training ” – K M Mahmud Hasan, Feb, 2010

It is a group of individuals who provide staff support to the line organization in support of the safety effort. It includes occupational and Industrial safety, system safety, industrial hygiene, health, occupational medicine, environmental safety, fire   protection, reliability, maintainability and quality assurance personnel.

Safety committee is constituted to promote safety of employees through mutual co-operation between management and workmen.

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Collective Bargaining
Collective bargaining is process of joint decision making and basically represents a democratic way of life in industry.

Bargaining Form And Tactics

A collective bargaining process generally consists of four types of activities- distributive bargaining, integrative bargaining, attitudinal restructuring and intra-organizational bargaining.

Distributive bargaining: It involves haggling over the distribution of surplus. Under it, the economic issues like wages, salaries and bonus are discussed. In distributive bargaining, one partys gain is another partys loss.

Integrative bargaining: This involves negotiation of an issue on which both the parties may gain, or at least neither party loses. For example, representatives of employer and employee sides may bargain over the better training programme or a better job evaluation method.

Attitudinal restructuring: This involves shaping and reshaping some attitudes like trust or distrust, friendliness or hostility between labor and management. When there is a backlog of bitterness between both the parties, attitudinal restructuring is required to maintain smooth and harmonious industrial relations. It develops a bargaining environment and creates trust and cooperation among the parties.

Intra-organizational bargaining: It generally aims at resolving internal conflicts. This is a type of maneuvering to achieve consensus with the workers and management. Even within the union, there may be differences between groups. For example, skilled workers may feel that they are neglected or women workers may feel that their interests are not looked after properly. Within the management also, there may be differences. Trade unions maneuver to achieve consensus among the conflicting groups. …Read the entire entry