(Column) The impact of the number of choices on the quality of decision making

To find out what influences the quality of decision making, researchers Hans Georg Gemünden and Jürgen Hauschildt conducted a study of 83 business decisions made in a company with 1,380 employees over a period of 18 months, asking the same management team eight years later whether the decisions were good or not. *1

It was the number of options thaat had a significant impact on the quality of decision making. The percentage of decisions that were judged to be "very good" after the fact increased by 16.7 times when there were three options compared to two options.

There is not enough data on what happens when there are more than four options. However, if you have two choices, "do it or don't do it" or "option A or option B", it would be better to add another optioon to make the choices three.

*1: Hans Georg Gemünden and Jürgen Hauschildt. (1985). "Number of alternatives and efficiency in different types of top-management decisions". European Journal of Operational Research, 22(2), 178-190.

---