A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON GENERAL DECISION MAKING STYLES OF MIDDLE LEVEL MANAGERS BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC SECTOR ORGANIZATIONS IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

In this study decision making styles of middle level managers in three government departments and three private companies were studied to find out their general decision making styles and further a comparison was done between these two sectors. Literature sl,lggests five decisions making styles such as rational decision making, institutive decision making, dependent decision making, avoidant decision making and spontaneous decision making. These five decision making styles were observed among the selected sample and questionnaire GDMS instrument developed by Scott and Bruce (1995) was administered among twenty numbers of managers in each sector. Analysis was done using descriptive statistics. Results disclosed that there is a vast different between government sector and private sector middle level managers in making decisions. Most of the government managers display dependent and avoidant decision making styles while private sector managers display rational and spontaneous decisions making styles. Key words - general decision making styles, rational decision making, institutive decision making, dependent decision making, avoidant decision making ,spontaneous decision making.