Organizational decision making involves making a choice to alter some existing condition. Choosing one course of action in preference to others, you expend resources to implement the decision with the expectation of gaining something desirable. Some decisions are made to maintain the status quo, but theoretically the mere fact that a decision was called for not to change something alters the overall situation. Thus, a decision entails a series of other choices that may rightly be regarded as part of it.

It is assumed that a decision maker selects the course of action most appropriate to achieving a desired result or objective. Deciding what is most appropriate is often difficult and there is always some degree of risk involved in implementing that decision. Concerns that are central to the decision-making process include increasing potential gains, monitoring the ongoing process, and reducing the resource expenditure and risk involved. It should be noted that the great majority of all decisions are routine and based on previously adopted policy.

Routine decisions have the advantage of requiring little time or mental energy to make. They can be made according to regular schedules or where clear need exists, without having to start from scratch each time. The central risk involved in routine decision making is the failure to perceive a need to reconsider existing policy or program assumptions.

Few issues have occupied such a central place in the literature of public administration or have generated so much debate as the question of how to make decisions. Arguments have raged over issues such as the importance of goal setting, the capacities of decision makers to use information objectively, the scope of data that they use, and the consequences of employing different approaches to decision making.

Models that are applicable to administrative organizations have been derived from a variety of disciplines, notably economics, philosophy, and political science. Some have stressed statistical techniques, utilizing quantitative data and value-free criteria for decision alternatives. Others, recommend the use of more informal measures of decision choices.

The rational approach is drawn from economic models of decision making. According to this classical outlook, decision makers are consciously rational. That is, they order their behavior so that it is “reasonably directed toward the achievement of conscious goals.” The relationships that are assumed to exist between means and ends are also important and enable the decision maker to choose the most rational means for achieving the specified end.