Psychological Investigation on Obedience to Authority and Decision Making in Workplace

This article discusses the psychological investigation on obedience to authority and decision making in the workplace. It covers the Milgram study, which shows that people have a natural tendency to obey authority, and the importance of group dynamics and team building in the workplace. It also discusses the decision-making process and the systematic approach that should be followed to avoid bad decision making.

Activity 1
In order to have an answer related to these, psychological investigation is very
important. There is a high chance of ‘obedience to authority’ to be the answer for this.
Accordng to this study, it can be determined that a ordinary man has the potential to inflict
pain on his fellow being if he is instructed or ordered to do so. It is not important to have
knowledge in the field of introductory psychology or high school psychology for this purpose
(Burger, 2009). Yale, a well known psychologist has taken initiative in this regard.
Some citizens were brought into the lab and were instructed to act as teachers. If the
learners failed in a simple memory task, then proper steps would be applied. It could be either
fake and painful electric shocks or anything else (Burger, 2009). Hence, everything was a
complete setup. They can be explained below-
 Electronic shock machine, a total fake
 Experimenters were the actors who were hired by the psychologist
 Learner were hired by the experimenters and they were pretended to commit
punishment-deserving mistakes
A famous psychologist, named Stanley Milgram has conducted a thorough study on the
actions of the Nazi concentration camp guards. It was very natural from the outcome that
there were existing a natural tendency among the guards for obeying the authority. Although
it could be treated as one of the characteristics of general human traits or German psyche. Ut
However, it was reflected from the study that it was a real statistic which shows that about 65
percent of all the participants were not only responsible for they thought to electric shock to
be but also they went all the way, potentially lethaling the dose in the face and by letting
losse the maximum of the repeated mistake done by the learners (Burger, 2009). With the
same, the American Psychological Assocition was required to approve a set of strict ethical
guidlines infront of the public opposition. It was made mandatory that-
 The participants must be informed regarding the main purpose of the study before
their participation
 The participants will have the right to leave the experiment at any time without
giving any penalties.

 At the end of the study, a whole debriefing of the case study should be explained
by proving proper reasons for the same.
Though the Milgram study has sufficient evidences on the human characters, but it was very
clear that they deploy cruel punishment while they are under the orders. Hence, it is natural
that must be made in terms of cruelty as this will deliberate the administration of the
suffereing and will also broaden the scope. In between the deliberate and the non deliberate
type of cruelty, a clear distinction or division must be made (Dzulkefli, 2010). It is true to
some extent. Although it is not completely logical. Productive science makes it clear that the
linguistic conventions is both conceptual clarity and theoretical fertility. According to the
Psychologist Neil, there are some assumptions that he has made reagrading the meaning of
cruelty. They are:
 Cruelty refers to possessing a theory of mind (It is the potential of
understanding behavior of other human beings by imputing mental states to
them)
 Explanation required in relation to “own” behavior regarding the disposition
of desire and cause in context to different types of mental states taking place
in other human beings
In this context rational decision making is very necessary. It is a very logical multi-step
model in order to choose in between the alternatives following an order from identification of
problem from the solution (Dzulkefli, 2010).
Linear programming is a process for decision making under conviction. Although, the course
of action is selected out of all the possible alternatives producing optimal results.
Nevertheless, the limitation will be-
 Varity of goals
There are multiple issues in Linear programming that helps in decision making progress.
This programming is widely used as mathemataical method of controling an optimal solution
to problems like finding out minimum staff cost or finding out the most nutritional
collaboration of ingredients (Perry, 2012). Nevertheless, this process can widely be used in
offices and other workplaces where there is given workload to the workers, and the workload

differs per worker as per their skills and staffing requirements. It can also be used to control
the least costly mixture of worker skills in order to handle the workload.
Activity 2
The process of decision-making is one of the requisite skills in any workplace and it is an
effective point for becoming a good leader (Perry, 2012). The important decision points are
as follows-
 Which strategy is to be pursued?
 Which person is to be hired?
 Which supplier is be to used?
Existennce of formula makes the decision making process very easy. There are different
approaches to the problems and every decision is related to some or the other challenges.
Hence, to avoid any kind of bad decision making, a systematic approach must be followed.
1. Every people in general could find it easy to identify themselves among different
groups in which they belong. These groups could consist of either friendships or
personal relationships, but there are some that are established in a formal way and are
possibly be part of larger companies. As stated by Moorhead Griffin (2006) the productivity and
performance of an organization mainly comes from the workforce. There are many
companies in the world that focuses on reconstructing the organization around their
work groups so as to enhance their performances on productivity and innovation and
give better customer services.
2. Group dynamics must be adopted by managers in order to follow right approaches for
interacting with the group members. It mainly deals with the behavioral patterns and
attitudes of the particular group (Taylor, 2015). The group dynamics are generally
concerned about-
 How the groups are formed?
 Which process must be followed for their functioning?
 What is the structure of the group?
Hence, it is particularly concerned with interactions and forces that operates in between the
groups. However, there are a total of 8 Cs for team building-

 Commitment
 Control
 Collaboration
 Clear Expectations
 Competence
 Creativity
 Communication
 Coordination

References
1) Burger, J. M. (2009). Replicating Milgram: Would people still obey today?(link is
external) American Psychologist, 64, 1-11.
2) Dzulkefli, S. (2010). Group and Team,
http://www.academia.edu/9397572/Group_and_team. Accessed on 8th May, 2015.
3) Perry, G. (2012). Behind the shock machine. Melbourne, Australia: Scribe.
4) Taylor, A. (2015), Group Dynamics, group-dynamics-its-characteristics-stages-types-
and-other-details-management/5363/. Accessed on 8th May, 2015.