Assignment Instructions

The ability to work as a team and to be able to achieve consensus in today’s workplace is an important skill. Before we explore the world of work,labor and management, we will study the nature of consensus decision making as a means of attempting to bridge the gap between the two sides in a collective bargaining simulation.

Read:

1. A Short Guide to Consensus Decision Making: An Alternative to Robert’s Rules of Order for Groups, Organizations, and ad hoc Assemblies that Want to Operate by Consensus
2. Consensus Decision Making

Forum:

1. What are some of the advantages of a consensus decision-making process over traditional methods of decision-making, such as majority voting and Roberts Rules of Order? What are the disadvantages to consensus decision-making, if any?
2. Describe the conditions that underpin consensus building. Which of these conditions do you think is the most important?
3. Have you ever participated in a consensus decision-making process or familiar with an example of such an experience? Describe the experience(s).

Forum assignments are to be completed in the [Forums] tab. Do not submit your responses in the [Assignments] tab or anywhere else on Sakai (you will not get credit if your submission is not in the right place, even if you submit it on time). Click on your group number in the [Forums] section and submit your posts. Each week your TA will set up the discussion thread to which you will be submitting your responses.

If you haven’t yet done so, you may want to review the brief PowerPoint presentation on active reading techniques in the [Resources] tab.

Then reply to this person below

The different types of decision making processes are majority rule voting, Robert’s Rules of Order, and a consensus. Consensus is a decision making process that is based on the agreement of everyone. Majority rule voting is a process in which an option is chosen if it had more than half of the votes. Robert’s Rules of Order is a handbook that is based on the rules and practices of Congress, which revolve around majority voting within large groups. The advantages of CDM in comparison to majority voting and Robert’s Rules of Order is having everyone’s opinion acknowledged and making sure everyone is satisfied with the proposal. Unlike CDM, the other decision-making processes only satisfies some of the population, while the other portion of the population is not in agreement, which creates a minority. Another advantage of CDM is that all participants are engaged and communicative with one another. A disadvantage of a consensus is the time it will take to create a mutual agreement, it is very time consuming; with majority voting and Robert’s Rules of Order, it’s way more quicker to just vote and announce the winning proposal. 
     Conditions that are necessary for consensus building is a common goal, sufficient time, a clear process, trust and openness, active participation, good facilitation, and a commitment to reach a consensus. Trust and openness is the most important condition to me because in order to come to an effective agreement, everyone must trust each other and their ideas, as well as being open to the other participants ideas.  
     An experience I have had involving a consensus decision-making process was at home. My parents asked my siblings and I what we wanted to eat for dinner. Each of us choose something different, for example, Domino’s pizza, chinese food, and Popeyes. With such differences, the circumstances that emerged would be someone not being in agreement. So, we decided to go through a consensus; my siblings and I talked it out, and all agreed on Popeyes. We were all in agreement, and were satisfied with the final solution.