Emmanuel Etim|26 June 2016|6:32am
INTRODUCTION
Nigeria is a democratic nation and practices the principle representative democracy. Representative democracy is a form of democracy where elected officials represent the people and make decisions and laws on their behalf.
Representative democracy is often presented as the only form of democracy possible in mass societies. It arguably allows for efficient ruling by a sufficiently small number of people on behalf of the larger number.
For the efficient functioning of the society especially in a knowledge econony, it is required that decisions are made and made efficiently. Elected representatives thus must be decision architects if the society must develop and function efficiently.
The focus of this treatise thus is to consider the role of elected representatives as decision architects of knowledge economy and to proffer ways of improving on this important function for the development of Cross River State.
UNDERSTANDING THE KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
The knowledge economy according to wikipedia is the use of knowledge to generate tangible and intangible values. This knowledge can be used by decision support systems in various fields to generate economic values.
It can also be defined as an economy in which growth is dependent on the quantity, quality, and accessibility of the information available, and how that information is employed in the process of decision making, rather than the means of production.
Knowledge has always been an essential force in economic development. In today’s increasingly knowledge based world, more countries are embracing knowledge and innovation- related policies and strategies to spur growth and development.
The knowledge economy commonly makes up a large share of economic activity in developed countries. Nigeria in general and Cross River State in particular are yet in early stages of maximizing the opportunity that knowledge economy offers for their advantage.
It is important that elected representatives in Cross River State thus reposition to take advantage of the opportunity that knowledge economy offers us in the 21st Century to drive development in the state and the nation. They can do this by functioning as effecient decision architects.
DECISION MAKING AND KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
In its simplest sense, decision making is the act of choosing between two or more courses of action. In the wider process of problem solving, decision making involves choosing between possible solutions to a problem. Decisions can either be made through intuitive or reasoned process, or a combination of the two. Decision making is critical in a knowledge economy.
The traditional decision theories tend to conceptualize quality and performance criteria as based on individual abilities, such as rational skills for overcoming human irrationalities when deciding.
What is more, decision making and decision criteria have rarely been considered from an organizational and social psychological angle. Yet this angle is crucial in understanding and explaining values and taken for granted in social contexts. The knowledge of the latter are central to successful management of complex change and decisions in the society.
In a knowledge based economy, we propose that a knowledge leader’s primary deliverable is a good decision. More and more elected representatives are being tasked with making decisions that are likely to be biased because of too much information, time pressure, simultaneous choice, or some other constraints.
They often lack important information regarding a decision, fail to notice available information, face time and cost constraints, and maintain a relatively small amount of information in their useable memory.
In the knowledge based economy, productivity is highly dependent on informed and sustainable decision making. Knowledge based decision making is thus possible when information asymmetry is minimized. There are many factors that impede or expedite knowledge sharing and its impact on reduction of information asymmetry for decision making.
From the foregoing, it is clear that a lot still needs to be done to reduce information assymetry as it affects our elected representative to help improve their role as decision architects in the state. We must improve the process of knowledge sharing and knowledge management as a first step to this.
There is a close relationship between decision making and knowledge management. Knowledge sharing is the key to knowledge management, which allows knowledge exchange and information flow between representatives and constituents and among elected representative to enable informed and participative decision making.
ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES AS DECISION ARCHITECTS
Elected representatives must seek to understand the dynamics of knowledge sharing process for decision making in the context of inter and intra-institutional knowledge governance mechanism in all sectors. They also need to alter the environment in which decisions are made so that they are more likely to make choices that lead to good outcomes.
Elected representatives can do this by acting as decision architects. They must develop an approach for structuring the environment to encourage good decision making. The approach must consist of some of these steps:
Understanding the systematic errors in decision making that can occur.
Determining whether behavioral issues are at the heart of the poor decisions in question.
Pin pointing the specific underlying causes.
Redesigning the decision-making context to mitigate the negative impacts of biases and inadequate motivation and
Rigorously testing the solution.
CONCLUSION
From the aforesaid, it is clear that the role of elected representatives as decision architects in a knowledge economy is a very important one and we must take steps to improve this process for the growth and development of our state and nation.
Emmanuel Etim
Is the Special Adviser (Research and Strategy), Office of the Hon. Speaker
Cross River State House of Assembly