Deferring a decision: what conflict between options can explain
When a committee asks for a proposal to be reworked, the additional work does not always clarify what is blocking the choice. The management question is specific: does deferral address uncertainty that can be reduced, or a trade-off that nobody wants to make explicit?
What the literature establishes
Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir (1992, Psychological Science) demonstrated experimentally that conflict between options can encourage decision deferral. In some of the situations studied, adding an attractive option increases the tendency to defer rather than choose. Deferral therefore does not necessarily mean that no satisfactory solution exists: it can arise because several solutions become difficult to distinguish.
The need for a reason to choose
Eldar Shafir, Itamar Simonson and Amos Tversky (1993, Cognition) offer an account of choice based on the reasons people can draw on to prefer one option. This approach sheds light on difficult trade-offs in which each solution has a defensible advantage, but none clearly prevails. In management, it encourages a distinction between an insufficiently documented proposal and an insufficiently articulated trade-off.
The hasty conclusion
One might conclude that a decision should be imposed whenever several options are acceptable. These studies do not justify that rule: waiting may still be appropriate when obtainable information could change the choice. The important distinction is to ask what deferral is meant to change, rather than treating every delay as a weakness. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot diagnose
Experimental situations do not reproduce all the constraints of an investment committee, regulatory approval or academic governance. They establish a possible mechanism, not the cause of every deferral observed within an organisation. A request for further analysis is therefore not, on its own, sufficient to diagnose avoidance of a trade-off.
A practical check in Lausanne
Within SHR’s decision-making programme in Lausanne, an exercise suitable for medtech companies, higher education institutions, international sports organisations and scale-ups across the Lake Geneva region is to keep a register of deferred decisions for one month. For each deferral, record the information awaited, the possible finding that would change the choice, the outstanding trade-off and the review date. On that date, calculate the proportion of deferrals for which the specified information was actually obtained and record whether it changed the choice. This record does not prove avoidance, but makes the intended purpose of the delay verifiable. To go further: explore the Decision-making training in Lausanne, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Decision-making in Lausanne
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