Working Papers

Study of decision styles has been a subject area of interest for the practitioners as well as the theoreticians. This paper presents a review of?? various conceptual frameworks that have been developed to study the decision styles of administrators and managers. Empirical results of decision styles of IAS officers are based on Rowe`s decision style model.???? This model identifies the decision styles in terms of "directive", "analytical", "conceptual" & "behavioral". In addition two recent models based on Indian thought, are also discussed. Further, a comparison of these models is presented to identify the similarities and complimentarities between these models.?????????? ?? ??The empirical results presented in this paper are based on a sample study of 27 senior IAS officers.?? In view of the smallness of the sample, the conclusions?? of the study are tentative in nature.???? It was observed that only 52% of the IAS officer used the directive (bureaucratic-procedural) style as a dominant or very dominant style.?? Further, 37% of the officer used the behavioral decision style, in its very dominant mode.?? Thus, this?? study points towards?? the inaccuracy of the popular misconcep???tions about senior bureaucrats as "bureaucratic-procedural" oriented. It is indicated that additional empirical data using the decision style inventory can further confirm the preliminary findings of this study. ??