Decision-Making in Organizations: The Role of Social Influence

This report examines the profound impact of social influence on decision-making processes within organizations. It begins by defining social influence and its relationship to conformity, obedience, and compliance. The report then delves into key theories and classic studies, including Solomon Asch's experiment on conformity, Stanley Milgram's study on obedience to authority, and Fred Luthans' research on the influence of information presentation. Furthermore, the report explores examples of groupthink and their implications for decision-making. The analysis highlights the situational factors that affect group influence, emphasizing the roles of normative and informational influence. The study underscores how individuals are affected by group dynamics and authority figures, and it emphasizes the importance of understanding these influences to improve decision-making in organizational contexts.

Running head: DECISION-MAKING
DECISION-MAKING
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Executive Summary
Social influences refers to the behavioural changes in a person caused due to another
person whether intentionally or unintentionally due to the influencer and is dependent upon the
relationship between the influencer and the person being influenced. It therefore refers to the
conformity, obedience and compliance to the influencer. Decision making therefore is dependent
upon the social influence created by the influencer upon the person being influenced. It can also
be said that the normative expectation and the social influence of persons has an impact on the
decision making capability of the people. The main aim of the paper is to show the influence of
society or the impact of social influence on the decision making capabilities of people. The paper
will discuss about certain theories related to decision making and the way the social influence
has an impact on the decision making process of people. Some of the theories that will be
discussed in the paper is that of Solomon’s asch classical theory, Fred Luthan’s theory and
various other theories.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................4
Solomons’s Asch’s classic study into the impact of social conformity on decision making..........4
Stanley Milgram’s classic study of influence that obedience to an authority figure can have on
decision making...............................................................................................................................6
Fred Luthans study on influence of information presented in computer printout in contrast to the
same information presented from an ordinary typewriter...............................................................8
Groupthink examples.......................................................................................................................9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................11
References......................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
Decision making refers to selection of particular courses of action from among different
alternatives. It refers to choosing the best alternative dependent upon various factors such as-
beliefs, values, social influences and others (Higgs, 2015). Social influence refers to the
behavioral changes brought in a person due to another person whether intentionally or
unintentionally and it also depends upon the relationship between the influencer and the person
being influenced. Therefore it can said that social influence is related to-obedience, conformity
and compliance. It can also be said that normative expectation and the social influences have an
impact on decision making (Backward & Festinger, 2017). The main aim of the paper is to show
the relationship between the social influence and decision making of people. The paper discusses
will discuss about the various theories in order to explain the relationship between the social
influence and decision making. Some of these theories are- Solomon’s Asch, Stanley Milgarm
and others.

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Discussion
Solomons’s Asch’s classic study into the impact of social conformity on decision
making
Figure 1: Solomon’s Asch Experiment
Source: (BATTAL et al., 2018)
An experiment was conducted by Solomon Asch in order to understand the impact of
social pressure of a group of individual decision making and his experiment came to be known as
the psychological experiment or the classical theory (BATTAL et al., 2018). His study was
aimed at understand the extent to which the pressure of a group could affect a person to confirm
belonging to the same group. There was an expectation of an obvious answer to the tasks of the
line staff and it was found that if a person gave a wrong answer it was because of the group
influence on him. In order to understand the relationship between the social influence and
decision making of people Solomon conducted a lab experiment, in order to understand the

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degree of conformity, and this experiment included 50 male student from the Swarthmore
college in USA. A vision test was conducted for them. A participation that was naive was setup
in a room where there were seven confederates with the help of line judgement task, and it was
already decided by the confederates in advance what will be their answer when asked the
question (Bruch, Hammond & Todd, 2015). The one person who was a real participant believed
that the others were also real. The participants were required to answer that which comparison
line was most similar to the target line in the visual test. The answer was quite obvious and the
real participant was made to sit at the end of the row and was required to give the answer at the
last. In total there were 18trials and the confederates gave wrong answers in about 12 trials and
Solomon was interested in seeing if the real participant would confirm to others decision
(Gibson, 2019). The experiment also included control, conditions in which there were no
confederates and only the real participants. From the experiment, it was found that about 32% of
the participants confirmed to the wrong answer given by the majority of the confederates. In case
of the 12trials that were critical it was seen that about 75% of the participants agreed with others
at least once and 25% never agreed at all (Nolan et al., 2008). It was also observed that in case of
control groups where there was no pressure to confirm to the majority of the people, only 1 % of
the real participants gave a wrong answer. An interview was conducted in order to understand
why the real participates agreed with other most of times; most of the people did not believe
about their conforming answers but rather gave answers that were similar to others because of
the fear of being laughed at for giving a different answer. Some of the real participants said that
they believed the group’s answer to be correct and that is why they confirmed (Knoll et al.,
2015). Therefore it was understood from the experiment that people agreed due to two main
reasons. These included- normative influence and informative influence. Normative influence

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refereed to the desire to be a part of the group and that made the participants to agree with others
in the experiment and informational influence included the feeling that the group members had
more information than the information held by the real participant and therefore they agreed
(Lord, Lee & Choong, 2001). It was also found that the larger the group, the chances of
agreement between the people increased however this happened only to a certain extent and not
always. It was also found that if the number of members in the group increased to more than 3
people the chances of conformity declined and moreover the chances of conformity increased.
Therefore there were different situational factors that had an impact on the degree of group
influence on their decision making ability. Some of these were- lack of any group unanimity, the
group size, the difficulty of the tasks and in case of private answers (Rimal & Real, 2005).
Stanley Milgram’s classic study of influence that obedience to an authority figure
can have on decision making
An experiment was carried out by Stanley Milgram from Yale University in order to
understand the conflict between the personal conscience and authority obedience. This
experiment was carried out in order to understand genocide acts of those who were accused of
the world war (Miner, 2015). It was carried out by Adolf Eichman in order to get an answer to
the question- whether it was the million accomplices of Eichman who were following orders and
whether they could be called accomplices at all? Milgram did this experiment to understand if
the German people were doing thing in obedience to the authority figures as it was a common act
in case of the Nazi killings. The main aim of the experiment was to find out the extent to which
people were obeying the instruction given to them even when it involved harming other people.
The procedure included selection of volunteers for the controlled experiment who were
responsible for investing learning. The participants basically included male participants 40 in

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number, who belonged to the age group of 20-50. These people’s job ranged from unskilled to
professional. Money was paid to them such that they would take part in the experiment. Initially
they were introduced to another participants who was actually a confederate of the experimenter
or Milgram. Next the roles were decided- teacher or learner and it was planned in such a way
that the confederate was always the learner. There was also an experimenter who was going to
act as such because he was not the real experimenter. Two rooms were used for this purpose one
for the learner and one for the teacher (Rao & Tilt, 2016). The learner was there with an electric
chair. The experimenter had the generator of electric shock. The learner was strapped to the chair
for the experiment with electrodes. He was given a pair of words to learn, the teachers rile was to
test him for the sane and he named a word and asked the learner to recall the other. The teachers
role was also to administer and manage the electric shock every time a wrong answer was given
by the learner. There were about 30 switches on the shock generator and ranging from 15volts to
450 volts which represented severe danger (Russell, Hawthorne & Buchak, 2015). The learner or
the confederate was required to give mostly wrong answers and he was given an electric shock
for every wrong answer given by him. Whenever the teacher failed to administer the shocks it
was the experiments duty to regulate the same through a set of orders to ensure that the orders
were followed by the teacher. There were basically four main orders- first one asked the teacher
to continue, the second was that the experiments required the teacher to continue, the third order
order was that it was essential fir the teacher to continue and the fourth was to force the teacher
by saying that he had no choice but to continue. The results of the experiment showed that about
65% of the participants or the people playing the role of the teachers carried it the instructions
that was given to them and carried out the shock treatments to about 450volts. Most of the
participants even carried out the shock treatment to about 300 volts. It can also be concluded

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from the experiment that ordinary people have the habit of following the orders to authority type
figure even if it required killing of innocent people. Obedience is ingrained in us since our
childhood period. It was also observed that people have the tendency of following the
instructions of all those authority figure who they feel are morally correct. It is necessary to be
obedient in particular situations however these do not guide people the way must react in
concrete situations. Therefore it was found out that adults have the tendency to go to any heights
to follow the instructions of their higher authorities.
Fred Luthans study on influence of information presented in computer printout in
contrast to the same information presented from an ordinary typewriter
Fred Luthans found that the information generated by computers on the activities choice
of the individuals was less influential in case of those people who are experienced with
computerized information as against the information provided in traditional format such as
mimeograph. On the other hand those subjects who had little experience with computers felt that
the information provided by the computers was more authentic than the information provided by
the traditional mimeograph. It was found out through the experiments that those subjects who
used information systems of computers were made bias by the same. It was also found that it
completely dependent upon the subjects information and experience with computers. All those
people who had sufficient experience with computers were over sceptical and on the other hand
those people who did not have much experience with computers gave too much of credibility to
computers. Therefore there was a need to carry out tests and experiences in the management
information system. However, it cannot be denied that computerized information play a very
important role in managerial decision making. There had not been much information about the
influence of computerized information on the decision making of the people. However it has also

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been argued that computers should only provide support to the mangers and should not replace
their judgement or their decision making. It was said that computers should not take the answers
on behalf of the mangers it should only provide guidance and support. It was also found that
there are still many people with little computers experience who felt that they did not have
sufficient knowledge to challenge computers and therefore if any decisions have been taken with
the help the computers they are supposed to be correct. It is also believed that human being are
not as effective as computers. In this respect it was found out that it is the human beings who tell
the computers the decision they want and then the computers takes the same decision for them.
In order to carry out the experiments, all the subjects were told that they were participating in a
study in order to analyse their aptitude and to carry out data utilization. After that all the subjects
were given a material packets and were asked to follow all the instructions given in the same.
They were asked not to turn any page and were told to fill the first page of the material. The first
page included various information related to the subjects such as their names, biological
information and other information. Then the subjects were asked to give a test to 20 multiple
choice question for 10minyues. The main aim of the tests was to carry out a personality analysis
of the subjects. After the test, the subjects were told that they would be given 5 minutes for
reviewing their answers because the test was difficult. There were packets that was randomly
passed and the last two pages contained irrelevant data related to the company’s annual
performance and this group became the controlled group. Then there were 31 control group
computer experienced subjects and there were 31 non-experienced computer users. Four
experimental groups were created. Then the results were analysed to find out the results of the
experiments.

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Groupthink examples
Group think refers to a psychological condition in which the groups desire to achieve the
common goals or harmony results in a dysfunctional outcome of decision making. In order to
solve the conflicts, the members try to reach a consensus without critical evaluation of the same
and thereby suppressing various viewpoints (Tedeschi, 2017). In case of groupthink there is no
individual creativity, the members are not allowed to raise various issues related to alterative
solution. The groups dynamics that has become dysfunctional in case of in-group, causes a
vulnerability illusion (Sadri, Ukkusuri & Gladwin, 2017). Therefore those members belonging to
the in-group try to put their decision making ability over the opponents ability. There can be
various impacts over the members belonging to the out-group. Various factors are there that
determines if the group think will have any impact on the decision making process. There are
various impacts on the decision making ability of the group due to group think. Group think
occurs when a group capable of taking effective decision fails to do the same due to pressures
from some of the group members. groupthink occurs basically when the members of the group
have social identity. Groupthink occurs when the members are incapable of sharing the
information that they have and all the members are unable to give contradictory opinion. This
happens because the members of the group are incapable of freely expressing their opinions in
front of their leaders. The group is incapable of reaching any informed decision because the
leader is incapable of listening to the opinion of all the employees and moreover they do not
want to get the information from outside. Some of the major symptoms of group think are that-
excessive optimism, stereotyping, and rationalizing, certain assumption about morality that is
inherent, there is need for unanimity and the is also a suppression of dissent. These factors create
an environment where the chances of taking wrong decision are higher (Schultz, Khazian &

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Zaleski, 2008). Some of the example of real world groupthink is- Swissair collapse. The
company was considered to be stable financially, and it was sometimes even referred to as flying
bank. Some of the major poor decision making led to its downfall. Some of the symptoms were
that- the group thought that they were invulnerable and there was group morality. There was lack
of proper expertise and other similar backgrounds. There were group pressures and norms that
were required to be followed (Pérez et al., 2016). The consequence was that there was collapse
of Swissair. There are some examples related to the political sector as well- Groupthink was
considered to be the main reason for war at Vietnam. There were administration rubber stamp
plans for the battle which supported false assumptions. Groupthink disabled the views that were
contrary to the war and therefore ultimately it was held and as a result many United States people
died. Another example of the groupthink is that of Marks and Spencer Company and various
other airways of Britain (Tindale & Winget, 2019). Globalization strategies were adopted by
both the companies in the year 1990 and these strategies were found to be having the elements of
groupthink and this was observed by Eaton. Due to the sense of invulnerability (Parks, 2018).
Both the companies underestimated various elements and that led to failure of their companies.
There are various other examples related to the same such as Pearl harbour, the second war of the
Gulfs. There was an invasion in the Bay of Pigs. An invasion happened in the Kennedy
administration that was planned by the Eisenhower administration and it was accepted without
any question. The Cuban stereotypes were accepted without any questions, about the
understanding of the Intelligence agency information.
Conclusion
From the above discussion it can be concluded that decision making process is influenced
by the social influences and the influence also depends upon the degree of relationship between

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the influencer and the person being influenced. Social influences are basically related to three
main concepts of – obedience, compliance and conformity. Social influence is the process of
influencing others intentionally or unintentionally because of the relationship between the
influencer and the person being influenced and it results in behavioural changes in the people
who are being influenced and also leads them to take decision. The theories of Solomon’s asch,
Stanley Milgram and others hep in explaining the role of social influence in decision making
process and others. There are various examples of group think also in the study that shows how
group think have an impact on major organization decisions. There are various both advantages
and disadvantages of social influence. For instance a mangers decision may be negatively
influence by the social pressures and others. The various theories discussed in the paper basically
includes- the influence of conformity on decision making, the influence that conformity to an
authority figure on the decision making, there is also a difference between how the information is
being received by a person that influences their decision making.

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