In today’s business world decision making has become more complicated than it has been (McCall & Kaplan, 2003). Dealing with people only gets harder as time goes buy and critical thinking and decision making skills only become more needed with time in today’s workplace. This paper will discuss both critical thinking and decision making, as well as give both author and personal opinions on both. It will also discuss their inter-relation and benefits.

What is Critical Thinking and Decision Making

Critical thinking is defined by The College of Wooster as 6 stages. Those stages include; understanding, research, evaluation, pre-solution, refine and modify, and the final solution. The first step, understanding, is a personal, mental process. One must internally understand a situation before they can move to the next step. This step can include reading a statement multiple times. It may also include a comparison to a personal situation that gives a clearer understanding of the problem. Once as understanding has occurred, research must be done. This step is self-explanatory. One must gather information on a given topic from different sources to obtain an unbiased view. Once the research has be

The Northern Territory University (NTU) defines decision making as “The process through which managers identify and resolve problems and capitalize on opportunities” (Learning objectives, 1998). As in Critical thinking, decision making has steps. NTU states that there are 7 steps to successful decision making. These steps are: Identifying opportunities and diagnosing problems, Identifying objectives, generating alternatives, evaluating alternatives, reaching decisions, choosing implementation strategy, and finally monitoring and evaluation. The first step, Identifying opportunities and diagnosing problems, is based on the information received. At this level managers must receive top quality information or it will be junk in, junk out. The second step is identifying objectives; these should be concise and direct. These should also be relevant. The third step in the decision making process is generating alternatives. This step is self-explanatory. This relies on the manager’s ability to think outside the box and come up with solutions. After alternatives are generated they must be evaluated, this is step four. At this stage the manager must evaluate each possible alternative and rank it accordingly. The next step is reaching a decision. This is where all the facts need to be reviewed and a decision made. After the decision is made the implementation method must be chosen as well. Finally after the decision has been implemented it must be monitored closely to make sure it was the best solution for all related parties. (Learning objectives, 1998).

I think critical thinking is the ability to look at a situation and analyze it. Once it has been analyzed then decision making comes into play. Once the situation is analyzed there needs to be a solution or an alternative and one must use good decision making practices to arrive at that solution. Decision m

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