Separate vs. Joint Preference

Managerial Decision Making Joint vs. Separate Preference Reversal Leaders and managers have two different ways of addressing issues, and these are through joint preference reversal and separate preference reversal. When a person decides something in joint preference, he or she focuses on making several decisions on different things at different times (Bazerman, Loewenstein, & White, 1992). Those who are interested in separate preference decision making choose only one area to consider and decide on before moving forward onto something else (Baron, 1988; Bazerman, Loewenstein, & White, 1992).

Both options can be good ways to make decisions, but each way to decide is very different. It must be unique to the person making the decision and unique to the circumstances of that decision in order to be successful. When a person uses joint preference reversal, he or she is multi-tasking. There are several areas that need decisions, and the person makes all of those decisions at the same time (Baron, 1988).

This can work well, especially in a high-pressure environment where a person is required to make a number of decisions at once in order to keep things moving forward (Baron, 1988). Not every management or leadership position is like that, of course, but many of them are. It is most often seen in large corporations, and also in fields such as IT and healthcare, where things are fast-paced and decisions have to be made quickly.

People in those kinds of fields know that they cannot take too long to make decisions, and that they might not be able to put off a number of other decisions while they are trying to make one, so they use the joint method in order to make sure they handle all of the important issues they face each day (Bazerman, Loewenstein, & White, 1992). The concern, of course, is whether decisions are made properly when they are made quickly and in groups.

Separate preference is a completely different concept, in which the manager focuses on making only one decision at a time, and then moving on to the next decision after that (Bazerman, Loewenstein, & White, 1992). This would seem, on the surface, a more realistic way to make decisions, because multi-tasking could lead to mistakes being made. These kinds of mistakes can be very serious, and in the crush of decisions taking place they might not be noticed before they can do significant damage to the company.

For industries and fields that do not require that a number of decisions be made all at once, separate preference is the best choice (Baron, 1988). It can provide the manager or leader with the opportunity to think carefully about the issues he or she is facing, in order to make sure the decisions are made as accurately as possible. That will not work for every manager at every company every time, but it will certainly work for a number of them.

Both options for decision making are good, of course, just depending on the circumstances. Thinking about decisions and actually making them are also not the same thing. A person can think about a number of decisions all at once, and does not need to make those decisions all at the same time. This is a bit of a modified way of handling things, that allows for both the decisions to get made one by one but a multi-tasking approach to be used when.