HMGT 495 CASESTYDY 2

A FACT...

Is a belief that is true about the world. The list of facts describes the landscape against which the decision is being made.

Some beliefs about reality are good candidates for scientific confirmation. For example, the root cause of a situation or how an individual or group is being or will be impacted by a given intervention can be studied.

For these types of beliefs, the more evidence that we have for it, the more likely it is a fact. The quality of this type of belief will depend upon the evidence we have to support it.

Some beliefs, on the other hand, are matters of interpretation. For example, questions such as “What happens when we die?”, “Is there or isn’t there a God?”, and “Are human beings responsible for their actions?” are all matters that are not very good candidates for scientific analysis. They require a different sort of evaluation.

It is not likely that disagreements about these types of beliefs can be conclusively resolved in a short space of time. Nor is it necessary to resolve this type of disagreement to find common ways of moving forward for a very large majority of system-level questions.

This step is where we examine decision team members’ understanding of the facts.

Using the worksheet, describe:

• What we know for sure about the context • The evidence we have to base this on • The information that is missing, but that we can find out (and who

will do this research)

• The information that is missing, that we probably cannot know

Develop a shared understanding of the context, including areas that may be unsettled or controversial.

Discuss the evidence:

• Is there agreement about the sources of evidence?

• Is there agreement about how this evidence is interpreted?

Ask specifically if there are any assumptions people believe are contentious or unclear and make these explicit.

Identify the source(s) of disagreement and explore whether consensus is possible.

Step 4

B. Jiwani, Good Organizational Decisions, SpringerBriefs in Ethics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33401-7_4

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© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

Good Decisions © 2021 Bashir Jiwani, PhD

C o p y r i g h t 2 0 2 1 . S p r i n g e r .

A l l r i g h t s r e s e r v e d . M a y n o t b e r e p r o d u c e d i n a n y f o r m w i t h o u t p e r m i s s i o n f r o m t h e p u b l i s h e r , e x c e p t f a i r u s e s p e r m i t t e d u n d e r U . S . o r a p p l i c a b l e c o p y r i g h t l a w .

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Step at the Evidence 4 Look

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” —Mark Twain

TIPS FOR SUCCESS

• Ensure that you list beliefs about the world (things that are true or false – often declarative sentences) and not values (what is important to us – often imperatives – “we should…”)

• Remember that reasonable people can understand what reality looks like

• People can also reasonably and legitimately interpret evidence differently

• If someone states a belief that is contentious, ask probing questions to understand the source of disagreement

• Use qualifiers (e.g. “sometimes”, “in most cases”) to get to a statement everyone can live with

• List disagreement about a fact as a fact itself. (e.g. there is disagreement amongst the team about best practice standards related to…)

• If the list is long and it helps with clarifying, create subheadings for the facts. Examples of possible subheadings include: › About end users (patients, families, students, clients)

› About the system (relevant laws, policies, and processes)

› About the team members involved

› About the community

• Capture in the story parts of the current context that are working well

• It may be useful to begin to append and reference key documents into the toolkit for the consult

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Step at the Evidence 4 Look

WORKSHEET (Fill out accordingly)

What we know for sure… Our evidence for this is...

About the end users

About the service providers

About relevant laws and policies

About the broader community

About the system

What we don’t know but can find out… The person responsible for getting this information...

What we don’t know and would have to guess about…

33Good Decisions © 2021 Bashir Jiwani, PhD

EBSCOhost - printed on 4/1/2023 11:48 AM via UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND GLOBAL CAMPUS. All use subject to https://www.ebsco.com/terms-of-use