Reflective Essay on Critical Thinking and Decision Making

Running head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY
REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Name of the student
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Introduction
Critical thinking and decision making capabilities of a manger enables the same in
optimizing the leadership control in multifaceted situations that are faced by the organizations.
The decision making capabilities of a leader is specifically dependent on the rational cognition of
the variables and the assessment of wider range of alternative solutions while implementing the
most relevant solution in the contingency. Dell (2017) defined critical thinking as the capability
of a leader through which the same analyzes the situation and thereby develops a decision as per
the needs of overcoming the concern. In this elation, the reflective piece will develop an
assessment of my critical thinking abilities based on the activities that were done in class.
Moreover, the assessment of the theories and models that are relevant to critical thinking would
permit me in developing an idea of their application into practice. Therefore, the discussion will
readily identify my decision making capabilities stimulated by critical thinki8ng behaviors and
thereby illuminate ways through which he decision making capabilities might be improved.
Concepts, theories and models
The classes enabled me in identifying some basic concepts and theories relating to critical
thinking which I thought would be helpful while considering the development of critical thinking
capabilities. The major concepts that I came across the session was Psychological contracts,
Abductive reasoning, Triangulation and Kallet’s framework of critical thinking. I was
generally driven towards the concepts as they validated most of the practices that are required to
be carried out by a manager while going through the critical thinking process. Among the
theories, Psychological Contracts is the one which is based on the personal beliefs and promises
relating to exchange. I believe that the psychological contracts mainly influences a manager’s
elation with the workforce based on the term of employment. On the other hand, I came across

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a concept relating to Abductive thinking which is critically based on the experience and
knowledge of the individuals while making a decision. I found the concept rather complex than
that of psychological contracts as it simply involved the experience of a person while operating
in a changed scenario.
Triangulation is a dynamic concept which I learned during the course of my class and
what I could make out was that the concept dealt with perspectives. The perspectives, in
triangulation, are attested with indirect measures and then analyzed. The estimation is held
correct if the answers are mostly the same for all the perspectives. The process of triangulation
is a tough concept for me from the very beginning as it emphasized on allocation of weightage
for the perspectives, which is an important activity for assessing the viability of the perspectives.
Lastly, I came across Kallet’s framework of critical thinking which is devised to improve the ‘out
of box’ thinking which is different than the automatic thought process. The reverse mechanism
of the framework was intriguing for me and I believe that it would significantly assist me in
improving my own critical thinking capabilities as per the situational needs.
Rationale for the selection of concepts, frameworks and models
Soltanzadeh and Mooney (2016) stated that psychological contracts are meagerly the
exchange of expectations and promises in an employment contract. It has been noticed that the
inclusion of promises and expectations in an employment contract enables a manager or an
employee in upholding the transparency of communication process. Moreover, Pettersen (2016)
stated that psychological contracts between a managers and employee is more like a mutual
understanding of the expectations that the parties have from the other. The nature of the
psychological contracts are being defined as relational, transactional and hybrid. A relational
contract is based on the loyalty of the management and the employees towards vice versa. On the

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other hand, the transactional contracts are specifically based on the phase where the workers in
an organization adheres to the specific terms of employment. Whereas hybrid constitutes of a
balance between the relational and transactional aspects of psychological contracts.
Abductive thinking or rational thinking procedure is being defined as a critical thinking
element where experience and observation holds the major criteria of the decision making
process (Rapanta, 2018). Micheli et al. (2019) opined that frequent observation on the outcome
of the actions and the experience gathered from the same supports the managers in improving the
rate of operations to suffice to the changing needs of the individuals or the organizations. On the
other end, Solbrekke et al. (2016) opined that abductive approach of critical thinking is
specifically based on the partiality of the experience and the predictions that are made while
running the process, which makes it different from that of inductive and deductive streaming.
Therefore, the abductive approach is specifically based on the confluence of predictions and
partial experience which strengthens the decision making process of an individual.
Green (2017) defined Triangulation as a process of validating the decision based on the
data that is cross verified through the different perspectives while inducing indirect values.
Therefore, in this relation, critical thinking is specifically dependent on the enumeration of the
values and assessment of the same to develop an idea on the multiple causes that are affecting
the critical thinking mindset of an individual. Moreover, Ayers (2016) stated that triangulation
minimizes the error of wrong decisions through validation on the points based on the indirect
weightage which enables a manager in strengthening the critical insights for valued decision
making.
Erkutlu and Chafra (2016) stated that Kallet’s framework relating to critical thinking
opposes the automatic thought processes at are considered by the humans while making a