Relationship between perception and decision making Every individual faces a point where he is expected to make an important decision

from a vast array of alternatives. The fact that the choices made at that point affects the outcome, it is to no awe that, an individual is required to go through all the alternatives and make a rational decision. If done so, there is a least chance of any negative outputs. But, to the dismay, this does not happen in the real world. People cannot process all the informations and scrutinize every single problem. As a result, they make a habit of deciding on the basis of perception. The quality of the final decision, hence made, has a great deal of influence of their perception. However, what one perceives can be substantially different from the objective reality (Robbins 2008, p. 142). So, we can argue that there is a thin line of accuracy between perception and decision making. Small firms to a large company rely on the positive choices to gain accomplishments. While on the contrary, Wrong choices ruin them. Every individual conventionally interpret their surroundings, differently, into something that gives them a logical explanation. Hence, Perception varies with individuals and surroundings. Perception is a process by which individual organize and interpret their sensory impression in order to give meaning to their environment (Robbins 2008, p. 142). In Todays World, hard facts do not shape the behavior of the decision, Perception does. Humans are bound habitually to perceive using one or all of the five basic senses. Information obtained from such perception plays a crucial role in the choices made and such decisions do not always have positive endings. There is a very important need for an organization to understand how perception works or better still, how a single perception affects the whole organisational behavior. There has to be an understanding of positive and negative effects of using shortcuts such as selective perception, projection or stereotyping. Moreover, it should be clear that the perception is affected by the time, environment, personality, intentions and history of the perceiver. The Perception processes mean that individuals usually interpret other people and situations differently and so routinely hold different views of reality, which in turn strongly influence their attitudes and actions (Bratton et al. 2007, p. 212).So, decision made for the same problem may vary from time, place, target or the perceiver, which helps us conclude that the decision made on such circumstances are prone to be irrational. In most organization, if not all, employees or the authorities do not follow the rational model of decision making. Decision making in organizations is a continuing process of identifying problems and opportunities and then choosing among alternative courses of action for dealing successfully with them(Wood et al.2004, p. 561). Many conflicts arising in a business is mostly due to the effects of perception in decision making. Authorities approach situations perceiving only half of the facts. Evolution of perceptive decision happened when people were delegated more responsibilities and it was tedious to assess problems, identify all relevant criteria, use their creativity to identify all viable alternatives, and painstakingly evaluate every alternative to find an optimal choice. (Robbins 2008) Thus, it is understandable that an employee or even a manager fends away from rational decision making. Most decisions, trivial to significant, today are made solely from the perceivers judgment, rather than by a defined prescriptive model.

Individuals, when faced with a problem, tend to operate inside the bounded rationality, that is, they extract fundamental features from the problems and create a simplified version that limits to fewer alternatives (Robbins 2008). In the process of seeking solutions that is satisfactory and sufficient, they miss a lot of complexities of the problem. They stop when they find a satisfactory alternative rather than going to other alternatives in search of the best alternative. This happens due to the limited processing capability of human beings. Hence, Perception, which can mislead us at times, also can lead us to satisfactory choices which can construe a path for the perception as a better tool for decision making. We have now a reason to believe that numerous factors form and distort perception. These can arise from the perceiver, the target or the context of the situation. On the individual level, when a perceiver sees his target in a particular contextual background, all the while, he/she generalizes a quick judgment about the targets physical appearance, age, sex, nationality and other senseabsorbing credentials. He does so by tallying with his expectations, past experiences, interests, motives and attitudes. The majority of the information hence constructed is erroneous. Several details can go unnoticed or dismissed while in the process of perception. This increases inaccuracy in decisions and Inaccuracy in perception is disastrous. For example, if a Human Resource Department of a company was to hire employees on the mere basis of inaccurate perception, the company would obviously miss out the potential employees and soon collapse due to unproductive members. The perceived data may lack the integrity to look beyond the information and blind our judgments, forcing us to make biased decision based on the environment or the target. But, this does not mean that the data hence collected are all wrong. Time has shown that perspective decision making is here to stay. The decisions made from the perception is fast, to the point and if developed, reliable. When an employee faces routine problems at work, unlike non-routine problems which requires creativity, it is only thoughtful to perceive it through past experiences. Perception, like many other authorities skills, can be learned and developed over time. (Wood et al. 2010) Many authorities jump into the decision without the proper consent of all the facts. All they rely on is their perceived view of the happening and the result depends upon how well they perceive. If a target is perceived without biases or indifferences, then the decision made is not faulty as it is said to be. A rational decision is made when an individual assess the problems deeply and filters all the alternative decisions to a single best one. There is no second though that the humans are prone to mistakes. Although carelessness, sloppiness, fatigue, and task overload can be contributing factors, some mistakes are caused by simple cognitive biases (Hitt, Miller &Collela 2006, p. 366). Such biases represent mental shortcuts which are often harmless and save time. Yet, they cause problems at times. The ideal decision-making model involves four sequential steps: recognize and define a problem; identify and analyse alternative course of action; choose a preferred course of action; and implement the decision (Wood et al. 2004) The model of rational decision assumes that the problem is always clear, which is wrong. There are problems where an individual have to think emotionally, or irrationally. A problem does not come with a tag and

hence creates diversion from real complexities. The model guesses that the decision maker has the ability to root all the choices and take the best alternative choice which also is not always possible. A problem contains a lot of complexities and is very hard to diversify the irrational knots of the problem. The model fails to consider the unstable world that does not even have much time for their family. In the business, Decisions are made in a matter of seconds and there is no time to assess the problems high perceived decision. Observing all the assumption of an effective rational decision model, it is clear that such an accomplishment is more than farfetched. Possibility of rational decision making is probable to some extent but considering the competition and the time, cost constrain in the workplace, we cannot expect employees or authorities to follow such model. On the contrary, perceptive decision provides time, cost and a satisfactory choice benefits which fits unarguably in the modern busy world. In this world, where everybody is habituated to perceptive decision making, it is hard to state the possibility of rational decisions. People have less time and economic constrains to scrutinize over problems individually. This has led individuals and firms to overlook the basic criterion: Unlike nonliving objects, Humans are Living beings capable of various emotional behaviors. Common observation on human provides a reason to believe that every individual act in a certain way. And, the level of information, an individual emits, from his behavior is very high that any perceiver cannot withhold the amount of information at a first go. So, Instead of deriving the decision from the information perceived, the perceiver takes the information which he thinks is true about the target. This already limits the possibility of a rational decision making. So, we can conclude that the perfect rational decision is not feasible, if not impossible, in our workplace. The knowledge of perception, instead, can help an individual understand others effectively and improve the decision-making skills. Reference List Bratton, J, Callinan, M, Forshaw, C &Sawchuk, P 2007, Work and Organizational behavior, 1stedn, Palgrave Macmillan, New York. Hitt, MA, Miller, CC, Colella, A 2006, Organisational Behavior: a strategic approach, 1stedn, John Wiley & Sons, USA. Robbins, SP 2008, Organisational Behavior, 5thedn, Pearson education Australia, French Forest. Wood, J, Chapman, J, Fromholtz, M, Morrison, V, Wallace, J &Zeffane, RM 2004, Organisationalbehaviour: a global perspective, 3rdedn, John Wiley & Sons Australia, Queensland. Wood, J, Zeffane, R, Fromholtz, M, Wiesner, R, Creed, A, Schermerhorn, J, Hunt, J & Osborn, R 2010, OrganisationalBehaviour : core concepts and applications, 2ndedn, John Wiley & sons Australia, Queensland.S