Assignment:
Read the following case study.
A nonprofit religious organization held a business meeting on a Sunday afternoon directly following its worship service. The meeting was attended by the eight board members of the organization, the board secretary, who is a non-voting member of the board, and the religious leader, who is a voting member of the board and just gave a very inspiring sermon during the service. The board members and board secretary were all volunteers. The minister was paid a full salary via donations from the members of the organization.
The financial officer of the organization gave a report on the current finances. It seemed that the organization did not have enough money in the bank that month to pay all of the bills, and, therefore, they were going to have to make some tough decisions regarding where to cut their spending.
The president of the board suggested that they take each item in their budget and look at the possibility of making cuts. He suggested each item be discussed thoroughly and that the group come to a consensus, a type of collaborative decision-making in which a solution is reached that everyone can accept, even if they favor another outcome, as opposed to a vote.
Another voting member of the board suggested that they make a chart ranking the importance/necessity of each item on the budget.
The secretary of the board suggested that instead of ranking the items by importance that they rank them by size in order to eliminate the most expenses possible with just a couple of decisions. The biggest items in the budget were the mortgage and the minister's salary.
The group discussed which strategy they would use for about 10 minutes. They all agreed that they would rank the items first by size and then assign numbers of importance (1 through 10) to each item. They all agreed that they needed to make decisions about what to cut before leaving that afternoon. They agreed to take a vote rather than coming to decision via consensus.
After 3 hours of meeting with no break for lunch or snacks although there were some cookies and coffee served directly after the worship service, the group came to the conclusion that they would cut the cleaning costs in the budget and would ask for volunteers to help clean the facilities each week until they could afford to hire someone back. They also voted to get rid of the dumpster and use the county-provided trash and recycling pick up.
The non-voting secretary suggested that they look at cutting the minister back to part-time or getting rid of the minister all together to be replaced by supply ministers for worship services at a mere fraction of the cost of a full-time minister. She reminds the group that using supply ministers saved them a lot of money after the last minister retired. The president of the board reminded the group that the Sunday attendance and regular donations dropped precipitously during the period of using supply ministers.
The group discussed all of the concerns with cutting this budget item, and the discussion got a bit heated. The minister refrained from entering into the discussion for at least 45 minutes. When they seemed ready to vote on the matter, the minister volunteered to skip a pay check. The members thankfully accepted the offer and then agreed to have a follow-up meeting the next week to discuss how they could increase their revenue and possibly cut the budget more.
Write a three-page analysis of the psychological aspects of decision-making that might have occurred in this scenario. Identify the possible sources of cognitive bias in the situation, and define the problem-solving strategy or strategies employed by the group. Share your conclusions about the group's strategies, and consider the following questions:
-Do you think they made the best decision about how to handle the budget?
-What are the possible sources of cognitive bias in this situation?
-In what ways do you think cognitive bias affected their decision?
-Do you think they should have used a different strategy?
-What strategy would you recommend?
-What strategy do you think would have caused more harm than good in this situation?
-What do you think would have been the outcome if they had used one of the two strategies you have indicated?