Choosing in batches: what variety alone cannot justify
Organisations often group decisions about services, tools or training to make trade-offs easier. The management question is specific: does allocating several resources together produce a diversity that the needs, considered separately, would not justify?
What the literature establishes
Daniel Read and George Loewenstein (1995, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied) studied the difference between combined and separated choices, including products intended for later consumption. In their experiments, choosing simultaneously for several occasions leads to greater variety than choosing sequentially. The composition of the resulting set therefore also depends on how decisions are grouped.
The mental boundaries of a decision
Daniel Read, George Loewenstein and Matthew Rabin (1999, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty) examine “choice bracketing”: considering choices separately or as part of a set. A broader view can reveal interactions that separate decisions overlook. But it can also turn the apparent balance of the set into a criterion distinct from how well each choice serves its intended use.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that decisions should always be made separately to avoid excessive diversification. That would overlook genuine dependencies within a set of decisions: shared risks, technical compatibility or reliance on a single supplier. These studies invite us to distinguish variety pursued for its own sake from diversification addressing an explicit constraint, rather than to reject all grouped decisions. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence does not establish elsewhere
Experiments on consumer choices do not demonstrate that an investment committee or an IT leadership team excessively diversifies its commitments. Within an organisation, coordination costs, regulatory requirements and heterogeneous needs can justify different solutions. Conversely, the variety of a catalogue is not, by itself, evidence of decision quality.
A practical check in Zurich
As part of SHR’s decision-making programme, a Zurich team in financial services, insurance, tech or a European headquarters can test this point during its next allocation of training. Before the collective review, each manager independently records their team’s need and preferred training option; after the joint review, the proportion of allocations changed is calculated. For every change, the record specifies whether it addresses a documented constraint or merely a wish to vary the offering. This proportion does not measure bias on its own, but makes the justification for the final variety open to verification. To go further: explore the Decision-making training in Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Decision-making in Zurich
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