Question: What Decision-Making Style Should Be Used?
ASSIGNMENT: In the following scenarios, determine whether an autocratic, democratic, or laissez-faire decision-making style would be most appropriate. Provide rationale for your choice that includes a discussion of the individuals involved, the environment, and the task to be completed.
1. You are the evening shift charge nurse of the intensive care unit. Your supervisor is sending two nurses from each shift to an upcoming critical care conference in a nearby city. The supervisor wants each charge nurse to submit names of the selected nurses in 2 weeks. All of the 12 fulltime evening shift nurses would like to go. From a staffing standpoint, there is no reason why any of them could not go. All are active in the local critical care organization. Financial resources, however, limit your choice to two. How do you resolve this situation? Select the most appropriate decision style.
2. You are the day shift charge nurse on a surgical unit. Because of your related expertise, your supervisor has asked you to select a new type of blood-warming unit. You want to be sure that you select the right one. Several companies have provided your staff with trial units. You have not received much feedback from the staff regarding their preferences, however, and you must submit your equipment request by 4 pm tomorrow. Select the most appropriate decision style.
3. You are the manager of a 30-bed medical unit. After consultation, you recently implemented a system for incorporating nursing diagnoses on the patient care plans. Although the system was expected to reduce report time between shifts and improve the quality of patient care, to everyone's surprise, including your own, you fi nd that the system is not working. You do not think that there is anything wrong with your idea. Many other hospitals in the areas are using nursing diagnoses with success. You had a consultant come from another hospital and give an update to your nurses on use of the system. The consultant reported that your staff seemed knowledgeable and appeared to understand their responsibilities in implementing the system. You suspect that a few nurses might be sabotaging your efforts for planned change, but your charge nurses do not agree. They believe that the failure may be lack of proper incentives or poor staff morale. Your nursing administrator is anxious to implement the system in other patient care units but wants it to be working well in your unit first. You have just come from a manager's meeting where your administrator told you to solve the problem and report back to her within 1 week regarding the steps you had taken to solve your problem. You share your administrator's concern, but how should you solve this problem? Select the most appropriate decision style.