On Decision-Making Mechanism

Hiroshi Uchikoga
Professor, NUCB Business School

Decision-making has been a long-standing research topic, not only among business practitioners but also among scientists. Recently, an article published in ‘Nature’ cited experimental data conducted at the Harvard Medical School, indicating how synaptic wirings in the brain occur when making decisions.

In particular, the study examines the simplest decision-making situation, a decision at a T-junction. It was a mystery how the neurons that make up the complex neural networks in the brain are connected even in simple decision-making processes. In business, leaders face numerous T-junction types of decision-making, such as approve/disapprove decisions.

The results showed that the decision-making neural network contained neurons that were ‘activated’ in response to each choice (right-turn/left-turn neurons) and that these neurons simultaneously inhibited the movement of the unselected choice. In other words, decision-making involves a set of activations of the selected choice and inhibition of the unselected one.

What implications would this have on situations wherein organization leaders make a choice? We can say that the mechanism helps stabilize the decisions they make and prevent unpredicted changes that may create confusion.

On the contrary, we can imagine situations wherein leaders’ brains ‘stabilize’ their decisions that go in the wrong direction. It is also known that cognitive and psychological biases exist and that leaders tend to make decisions in an unknowingly irrational way.

Japan experienced this phenomenon before deciding to enter World War II. The case material I recently developed, “1941 Japan: Decision-Making at Turning Points that Shaped History,” highlights six turning points when Japanese leaders could have avoided the war. Many of their decisions may have been affected by cognitive biases. The results of the “Nature research” imply that even decisions affected by these biases had become leaders’ firm beliefs by inhibiting other choices.

Reference

Daniel Wilson et.al "Synaptic Wiring Motifs in Posterior Parietal Cortex Support Decision-Making” (2024)