Social Decision Blockages
Social decision blockages – ‘Decision blockages’ already raise suspicion in the word. It smells of refusal, unreasonableness, rebellion, which all of us have to justify. Hierarchically structured organisations have a tendency to also attribute truthfulness to the powerful, after power and powerlessness have been assigned.
On the one hand this is plausible, because one of the main functions of hierarchy is to make decisions where decisions are required and where no unity can be obtained just with the help of arguments. Maybe this is one of the most important functions of hierarchy. The boss does not know better either, but he can, is allowed to, and must say what to do. This gives the organisation its operational capability. Therefore, superiors who don’t decide are quite a problem.
On the other hand, forcing decisions alters nothing about the fact that the creation of unresolvable conflicts, arising from opposing interests, are a consistent recurring phenomenon in organisations. In this way social positioning quickly develops from problems in making objective decisions. The various parties identify with the respective viewpoints and engage in trench warfare. Such infighting cannot easily be resolved through the objective decision-making by the hierarchy, because the underdogs of the winning party judge the decision-maker, and this then becomes a part of the conflict. Therefore organisations need the ability, with regard to their members, to let go of ‘correctness’, and with regard to the hierarchy, the ability to cultivate a wise interaction with the ‘losers’.