Decision Making (Pols 206)

Introduction

Decision making is one of the most central and debated concepts in public administration. This note examines its meaning and relevance in public administration, key theories of decision making (rational theory and incrementalism) and their critiques, and their applicability to Nigerian public administration.

Decision Making

Public administration is essentially about decision making — that is the heart of public administration. In fact, decision making is a key, natural human activity, and any individual, at any point in time, is faced with the problem of decisions and actions. So it is with policy and public administration. All the key elements of POSDCORB rest on decision making; in other words, each of those functions ultimately involves decision making.

Image depicting decision making 

Generally, decision making has to deal with the making of choices — the selection of what to do among diverse, competing alternatives. As individuals, for example, we are almost always faced with the problem of having to decide what to do, eat, wear, or where to go. In its traditional rationalist perspective, decision making encompasses the following flow:

1. Making a choice to alter some laws/conditions.

2. Choosing one course of action in preference to other possible courses of action.

3. Deploying some amount of organisational and individual resources to implement the decision.

4. Acting with the expectation of a favourable, functioning, desirable outcome — which could turn out bad or good.

Decision making, thus, has to deal with issues of choice-making in terms of:

A. What to do — that is, goals, objectives, and priorities.

B. The method of accomplishing identified goals.

C. The consequences or benefits to be derived from the decision embarked upon.

Objectives

Decision makers are almost always faced with a wide range of goals, objectives, and priorities among which choice or selection has to be made. At the organisational level, there are two main types of goals:

1. Organisational goals

2. Personal goals

Organisational Goals — This refers to the goals and objectives of every organisation. Every human organisation has a purpose or goal, and this goal can be understood from the functions, goods, and services provided by the organisation. Goals vary from organisation to organisation, and even within an organisation, goals operate within a hierarchy or framework. For example:

• Some organisations have multi-purpose goals, while others have single-purpose goals.
• Some organisations are public-oriented, while others are private-oriented.
• Some provide tangible goods and services, while others render intangible (non-tangible) services — such as many of the services rendered by government ministries.

Public organisations, in particular, formulate and pursue goals in order to make a public impact. Lack of satisfactory goal attainment is one of the recurring problems of most public organisations. Public goals are often not clearly specific, and are instead characterized by:

A. Broadness.

B. Unrealistic and abstract nature.

For example, a goal may simply be framed as securing citizens' support for education, health, or sanitation — such goals or pitches can amount to little more than rhetoric. Most public goals tend to be rhetorical in nature, and many public organisations, over time, branch out into new or unrelated areas beyond their original mandate.

Conclusion

Decision making sits at the core of public administration, underpinning every function captured in POSDCORB and shaping how organisational and personal goals are pursued. However, public-sector goals are frequently broad, abstract, and rhetorical rather than concrete, which contributes to the persistent problem of unsatisfactory goal attainment and mission drift in public organisations. This sets up the need to examine specific decision-making theories — rational theory and incrementalism — and how well they apply to Nigerian public administration.