Analyses of problem-solving and decision-making in complex and dynamic environments.

Abstract

Decision-making has previously been described as more complex under situations involving time pressure, ambiguity and in situations which are constantly changing (dynamic). The current study aimed to examine decision-making complexity and its relation to decision-making type and expertise in a population of Ambulance Officers and Fire Fighters. The research involved semi-structured interviews, based on the Cognitive Interview, and evaluated several hypotheses: (1) decision-making complexity will comprise at least four factors (time pressure, number of factors to consider in decision-making ‘space’, ambiguity and whether the decision-making space is dynamic); (2) the dimensions of complexity will differ across the two emergency services; (3) rank will have an impact of decision-making complexity, whereby experts will be less affected by complexity; (4) decision-making style (intuitively subconscious vs conscious and rational) used by participants will be impacted by rank. The current study found evidence for two dimensions of decision-making complexity– time pressure and ambiguity. Few differences in the dimensions of decision-making complexity seen across the two emergency services. However, differences were seen across ranks in the services: novices reported more examples of ambiguity than experts, and novices reported fewer strategies for dealing with time pressure. Experts tended to report making intuitive judgements more than their novice counterparts. The decision-making type used by Emergency Responder was dependent on the context in which the decision was made. The study concluded that complex decision-making in emergency responding work has two important dimensions – ambiguity and time pressure. The study also concluded that context determines the appropriateness of the decision-making type.