A Study of Instructors’ Decision Making Styles in MBA English Program and BBA in English Program at Siam University

Abstract

This study intended to describe the decision making styles of instructors in MBA English Program and BBA English Program at Siam University of Bangkok, Thailand. The study was primarily based on three decision making styles: ‘Autocratic decision making style, Consultative decision making
style and Group decision making style’.
This study designed as a descriptive quantitative research by utilizing the survey to find out which decision making styles the instructors preferred to use when they had to make a decision in their concerning faculties where they have worked. The distributed questionnaires consisted of two parts: the
demographic data and the decision making styles of the instructors who responded the survey. Total 10 of instructors from both schools of English Program were used in this case study. In fact, the 15 of instructors were distributed the questionnaires to give answers in this paper but the 5 out of 15 instructors did not respond and return questionnaires, and all respondents (instructors) were male. The survey distribution was acted in May 2015 to June 2015 and recollected all data from respondents in July 2015.
The collection questionnaires were computed by the descriptive statistic including frequency, percentage and means.
This study found that the favorite decision making style instructors used to attempt making a decision when they confronted the problematic issues in their faculties were the group decision making style as the most preferred decision making style in this study. Regarding demographic of instructors, the
results showed that the female instructors from both schools did not answer and all respondents were males, there were between 30-50 years old most and between 10-20 years of work experiences as well. The 8 of instructors earned PhD of education level while the 2 of instructors were at MA of education level.
Regarding discussion of research finding, the group decision making style the instructors preferred to practice when making a decision could generate five domains – communication, collaboration, responsibility, accountability and motivation in working place of an organization. However, the group decision making style always requires time limitation to reach decision making by collective ideas. About demographic, the equal gender is not so much important in the decision making process and instead the age, work experiences and education level are more effective on decision making process and meanwhile, heterogeneous nationality in decision making produces the effective outcomes with collective ideas and cultural differences.

Depending on the research’s finding, the recommendations are provided to the administrators and hierarchy staffs of both schools to consider collective idea in decision making and not always try to use autocratic decision making style in any problematic issues of faculties. The instructors are recommended to carefully consider the most effective decision making style relevant to situations to reduce time waste although they preferred to use the group decision making style.