Individuals make decisions, choices from among two or more alternatives. Ideally, decision making would be an objective process, but the way individuals make decisions and the quality of their choices are largely influenced by their perceptions. Individual decision making is an important factor of behavior at all levels of an organization.

Decision making occurs as a reaction to a problem. That is, a discrepancy exists between the current state of affairs and some desired state, requiring us to consider alternative courses of action. If your car breaks down and you rely on it to get to work, you have a problem that requires a decision on your part.18 Unfortunately, most problems don’t come neatly labeled. One person’s problem is another person’s satisfactory state of affairs. One manager may view her division’s 2 percent decline in quarterly sales to be a serious problem requiring immediate action on her part. Her counterpart in another division, who also had a 2 percent sales decrease, might consider it quite acceptable. So awareness that a problem exists and that a decision might or might not be needed is a perceptual issue.

Every decision requires us to interpret and evaluate information. We typically receive data from multiple sources that we need to screen, process, and interpret. Which data are relevant to the decision, and which are not? Our perceptions will answer that question. We also need to develop alternatives and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. Again, our perceptual process will affect the outcome. Finally, we have to consider how our perceptions of the situation influence our decisions. For instance, how good are you at saying no? Research indicates that we perceive that saying no is uncomfortable, and often after saying no we will feel obligated to say yes to subsequent requests. In fact, people are so uncomfortable saying no that they may agree to unethical acts. When student participants in a study asked 108 strangers to write “pickle” in library books, half of them did it!19