Exploring Self-Relevance in Decision-Making: First-Person, Shared, or Impersonal Professional Choice

To study the organizational decision-making process, important roles are attributed to self-relevance, the subjective perspective through which individual assesses the value and meaning of choice, and its relationship with professional age. Individuals can adopt a first-person ("I"), shared (Share) or impersonal (Imp) approach. However, no previous studies investigated the relationship between self-relevance, different perspectives, and professional age of decision makers. To fill this gap, the current study explored the behavioral correlates (responses and response times, RTs) of "I", Share, and Imp approaches, comparing junior and senior professionals. Additionally, the relationship between self-relevance and individual characteristics (through the General Decision Making Scale, GDMS, the Big Five Inventory, BFI, and the Maximization Scale, MS) was investigated. Results showed that the Share approach was the most frequently adopted, regardless of professional age. Choosing the Imp and "I" approaches was also connected to individual characteristics. Moreover, junior and senior groups showed common and differential aspects, allowing them to be profiled. Specifically, the senior group evidenced positive correlations between Imp and MS-Decision Difficulty, between Imp RTs and GDMS-Dependent and between Share RTs and GDMS-Avoidant. On the other hand, the junior group reported, in addition to significant correlations found for the senior group, a new negative correlation between "I" and GDMS-Dependent and a positive correlation between "Share" RTs and BFI-Conscientiousness. Focusing on practical implications, understanding these behavioral correlations in terms of personality and decision-making style could be useful and valuable for improving employees' engagement and sense of belonging by placing them in job positions that suit them.