Decision-Making Processes in the Structural Organization of Activity

The paper brings forward new mechanisms of the determination inuence of the decision-making processes on the characteristics of the process and result of professional activity. The authors demonstrated two main types of this inuence: direct and indirect. They also introduced and described a fundamentally new phenomenon of eliminating behavior of the subject in decision-making situations. According to the classication of the main forms of eliminative behavior they fall into three main groups: adequate, inadequate, and situational-relative. The paper interprets two new functions of decisionmaking processes in the organization of activity: structure-forming and generative. The essence of the structure-forming function is that decision-making processes with anegative subjective valence determine the preference of activity strategies that minimize their functional role in the organization of activity. The essence of the generative function consists in the formation of the repertoire of reproductive ways of overcoming uncertainty, thus improving the reliability of the whole activity and minimizing subjective expenditures for its implementation. The authors formulated a new methodological approach to studying decision-making processes. Instead of the traditional methodology of decision theory, which studies these processes directly, the new approach considers them indirectly. These processes are mediated by activity. It is necessary to interpret and study them as operating means which are formed and implemented “in” and “for” activity, as its natural and essential operational means. Hence, they nd their concrete-system being, true and unchanged by “research procedures” form, and extensive content only in activity. This approach corresponds to the fact which in the system methodology is considered as the change of prisms of vision (from “object-focused” to “system-focused”). The authors conclude that the essence of the phenomenon of eliminative behavior consists in the purposeful minimization of the presence of decision-making processes in the structure of activity, as well as in improving its reliability.