01/06/2023:
Functional Decision-Making Roles Revisited
In the Fall term of 1973, I accepted a three-month research internship with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace.
During that short period of time, I was given the opportunity to interview a fair number of high-level U.S.
bureaucrats, members of Congress, and various leaders of private interest groups on the mounting political
pressure for the United States to enter into negotiations with the Governments of Palau, the Marshall Islands, and
the Federated States of Micronesia, to terminate their status as United Nations Trust Territories -- effective since
1947 -- and to redefine their status in the world community.
It quickly became apparent to me that when it came to group decision-making, the individuals who participated in
determining whether or not a particular action is to be taken are based upon roles that often cross traditional
hierarchical boundaries and traditional hierarchical roles. I was left with a driving urge to further explore the
existing social science literature on how groups solve problems and how they actually make decisions.
The Beginning:
Upon returning to the University of Pittsburg's 1974 Winter term, I was granted permission by the University of
Pittsburgh, College of Arts and Sciences, to enroll in a 15-credit independent study course with the University's
Conflict Studies Program. Essentially, it was the equivalent of an undergraduate thesis. My initial goal was to
merely understand the then-current social science literature on decision-making, and to make some sort of
comparative report of my findings in a single major paper.
A faculty committee of three professors was organized: a Sociologist, an Anthropologist, and a Political Scientist.
As an initial starting point, each committee member assigned me a few obligatory texts. Of note was the
assignment of English anthropologist, P. H. Gulliver’s book, "Neighbours and Networks: The Idiom of Kinship in
Social Action among the Ndendeuli of Tanzania" (1971). The book reported on an African tribe, the Ndendeuli,
that used the idiom of kinship to organize and implement social and community action, not based upon the
principles of unilineal descent, but rather based upon a bilateral kinship system of kindreds, kin-sets, action-sets,
networks, and clusters.
This single book validated my own observation that social action was acted out by “sets”. Participants to the
decision-making process were not necessarily based upon strict hierarchical roles, but rather something else. A
second book, Lewis Coser’s, “The Functions of Social Conflict” (Coser 1956), I had already read as a part of my
previous course work. In it, Coser revisits the propositions of the early German Sociologist Georg Simmel,
specifically, that social conflict has certain positive functions that are essential to the maintenance of social
order.
What began as a project to merely describe current social scientific decision-making models grew into a full-
fledged model of my own. At its heart was the idea, “that decision-making in groups is accomplished through an
incrementally stepped process of interaction, involving only a portion of the group's total membership. The
decision-making membership is one that is constantly changing at any given time” (Lefcowitz 1975). What I
labeled a “decision-set”.
The model assumed that 1). a "decision", is a specific event characterized by the formal and sub-formal
implementation of a single action explicitly intended to solve one particular ‘problem; and 2). group decision-
making can involve a multitude of individuals in the initiation, modification, and implementation of a decision that
is not explained by traditional hierarchical models.(Lefcowitz, op. cit., p. 3).
Functional Roles:
My model identified seven (7) decision-making functional roles. While typically, decision-sets are composed of
multiple individuals with distinct functional roles, the roles themselves are not mutually-exclusive. A decision-set
can be comprised of a single individual, encompassing all or some of the seven identified roles. Additionally, the
model identified a single category for individuals who have hierarchical roles through which the decision path
passes, but who have had no impact - for one reason or another -- upon the decision or problem-solving effort:
“No Role” (N/R).
Briefly, the seven functional roles are:
Headship roles are specifically concerned with the actual utilization of the potential power and authority a
superior has over their subordinates. Headships roles are inexorably linked to the bureau's hierarchal
structure.
2. Leadership roles rely on an individual's ability to generate support or receive tacit approval from fellow
office-holders for their instructions, ideas ,or actions. Quite simply, the basis of leadership roles is
endorsement through acceptance and trust.
3. Information roles relates to the collection, evaluation, and distribution of information. Information roles
are essential to bureau operation in that they allow organizations to respond to internal and external
events, and alterations of circumstance.
4. Advisory roles relate to providing solicited advice to another member of the group; it may come from either
superiors, subordinates, or members of the same hierarchal level. Advisory roles are closely related to
information roles, in that they concern the proper action to be taken with respect to a particular piece of
information.
5. Ratification roles primarily come in four forms: a). through authoritative reference to an existing body of
written rules and regulations; b). through acts of endorsement by superiors; c). through acts of
endorsement or approval by an existing governing body; or d). through a combination of the previous
methods. Ratification - either directly or indirectly -- comes from above.
6. Action roles are concerned with the manner and to what extent a proposed action itself is to be initiated.
7. Influence roles comprise a group of ever-changing individuals who are technically outside the decision-set
membership, but affect the eventual outcome of decision-set interactions through their ability to sway
decision-making roles in indirect or intangible ways.
The Long Road to Validity:
The finished undergraduate paper remained unpublished and undeveloped for almost five decades. In part,
because I could not see how to realistically apply it to my early aspirations to establish myself as a professional
mediator and conflict analyst, my own conscious decision to not pursue an academic career, and most important
my own lack of experience. Yet, throughout it all my functional roles decision-making model was not completely
dormant.
The proposition that everyone - if they wish - can be a problem-solver within the wider context of social action
stuck with me as a basic proposition of the human experience. As a masonry laborer, I arranged scaffolding upon
which bricklayers and other laborers had to work in safety; even within the context of that low status job, I was
making critical life and death decisions. As a case worker, I was implementing policy and prioritizing decisions
that affected individual’s and family’s ability to minimally survive. As a management consultant, I was solving
operational issues that affected how that business efficiently and effectively solved a particular problem…and the
list goes on.
The point is: whatever our job -- whatever our particular station in life - we are all paid to solve someone’s
problems. We are all problem-solvers. Therefore, we are all active decision-makers about some things that are
important to someone else for some things that we are receiving payment to solve.
When I entered the IT world as a late bloomer in mid-life -- as I made the long career transition from database
developer, to business analyst, to project manager, to process analyst, to process engineer -- I began to have a
seat at the table. I was allowed to participate in and witness interactions where no academic researcher could
possibly go. I began to recognize instances -- within the context of my own contractual duties - that I had actually
held each of the seven functional roles that I had envisioned decades before.
I had come full circle.
Where from Here?
While the original concept of functional roles, now well-established as a valid approach to looking at group
decision-making and organizing group action, the lexicon I had developed to describe decision-making roles
seems to be in some respects sadly outdated. Throughout the years, a fairly large number of individual
contributors have independently produced functional role models used for various purposes. Of note is the
invention of the RACI matrix, of which I was unaware of until the mid-1990s.
The RACI matrix -- an acronym derived from Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, informed - is a method for
tracking project roles. It seems to have been created in the 1950s, and has no actual recorded inventor or author.
By the 1970s it was called the “responsibility attribution matrix” (Perfony n.d.). From that beginning, a whole host
of functional models have emerged (Maggio Sep. 2021) and (Fresco n.d.) :
RACI-VS (RACI plus "Verification" and "Sign-off");
RACIO (RACI plus "Out of the Loop";
RASCI (RACI plus "Support");
RAPID ("Recommendation", "Establish Agreement", "Perform and Execute"; "Provide Input", "Decide");
RATSI ("Responsible", "Authority, "Task", "Support", "Informed";
ARPA ("Accountable", "Responsible", "Participant", “support”, "Advisor");
PACSI ("Perform", "Accountable", "Control", "Suggest", "Informed");
RACIQ (RACI plus "Quality Review");
DACI ("Driver", "Approver", "Contributor", "Informed");
DCI ("Decision maker", "Consulted", "Informed");
RAS (“Responsible”, “Approve”, “Support”);
CARS (“Communicate”, “Approver”, “Responsible”, “Support”); and
CLAM (“Contributes”, “Leads”, “Approves”, “Monitors”).
In total, 51 functional roles; not including my own eight and excluding the 14 duplicated roles, this leaves 36
functional roles to describe human action. Some sort of codification effort on my part seems to be needed to
bring my model up-to-date.
Functional Roles, Revisited:
One of the main weaknesses of the model was that at the age of 25, still in school, I had no direct evidence to
support my thesis, save for a variety of academic tomes and my own limited experience. Decades later, I have
participated in tens of thousands of those small, day-to-day formal and informal decisions, and have observed
many others from afar within the context of my consultative and contractor roles.
One of the important distinctions between my functional role model and others is that mine was intended to be
descriptive. There is a vast difference between the way decisions and group actions “should be done” and what
is “actually done”. Anyone who has studied how groups work - how large organizations work - recognizes that
quite frequently, individuals “cut corners” to accomplish assigned tasks. Whether they are motivated by fear,
laziness, or just to keep pace with a firehose of daily and weekly tasks that are considered to be a core part of
their responsibilities, the pressure to “just get it done” is real.
RACI-based roles, in their many iterations, generally describe how things should be done: someone has the
responsibility of taking some action or performing a task; someone is accountable for ensuring that the action or
task is actually done correctly and accomplished in a timely manner; others need to be consulted as interested
parties who are affected by the action; and others need to be informed on a routine basis on the action or task’s
status. From a process engineer perspective both -- of course -- are important, but in this particular instance my
own interest remains the latter.
For example, it is rare that large organizations consistently maintain Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). The
reason is pretty straightforward: individuals are trying to do their day-to-day operational tasks. Often task and
process inputs from outside the work unit need to be manually massaged in some way. Technological mishaps,
half-measures, situational changes, lack of coordination, and lack of cooperation are the daily bane we have all
experienced. The price of documentation and quality control is that it is expensive; it often leads to individuals
performing roles that are beyond their regular duties for sustained periods of time.
Rarely do organizations pony up the necessary budget to bring in knowledgeable full-time resources to
accomplish the task correctly, or to approach problems in creative ways. In the modern operational -- Subject
Matter Experts (SMEs) -- sense of the word, functional experts are the only ones who understand how their piece
of the universe actually works. Often, what is in their heads is difficult to describe; the effort to nail down how a
process is supposed to work and the way it operates, in reality, is often a relatively long and painful experience
that is viewed as undercutting their core job responsibilities.
With these caveats in mind, I present my own updated version of My 1975 model, using RACI-family functional
roles where necessary:
1. Accountability roles are specifically concerned with the individual who has the responsibility - who owns --
the outcome of the job, operational task, project, or problem-solving effort, and who has the authority to take
action to make sure that a viable solution is efficiently and effectively achieved.
2. Authority roles concern authoritative decision-making power; the individual who has the power to either
accept or reject the efforts of the decision-set based upon their direct authority over individuals carrying out
Accountability roles .
3. Ratification roles primarily come in four forms: through authoritative reference to an existing body of
written rules and regulations; through acts of endorsement by superiors; through acts of endorsement or
approval by an existing governing body; or through a combination of all three methods. Ratification - either
directly or indirectly -- comes from authoritative sources who do not have direct authority over individuals
carrying out Accountability roles .
4. Leadership roles rely on the ability of a specific individual to motivate other decision-set members to
follow a specific problem-solving approach, idea ,or action through the influence of acceptance, trust,
perceived self-interest, or fear.
5. Action roles concern individuals whose duty is to take specific actions or perform specific tasks.
6. Information roles relates to the development, collection, modification, evaluation, distribution, and
analysis of information. Information can be a single new fact, or many exabytes of data.
7. Advisory roles relate to providing solicited advice to another member of the decision-set.
8. Influence roles comprise a group of ever-changing individuals, technically outside the decision-set
membership, but affect the eventual outcome of decision-set interactions through their ability to sway
decision-making roles in indirect or intangible ways.
Big Decisions vs. Small Decisions; Big Conflicts vs. Small Conflicts:
Perhaps the reader, here, is asking themselves the question, “So What? How does this affect me?”
In the almost five decades since my first formulation of functional decision-making roles have witnessed a
transformation of the business workforce. Gone are a long list of manual labor office jobs and devices:
typewriters, hand-delivered memorandum, policy documents ready for hand endorsement, and the processing of
other files and documents of all sorts have largely disappeared.
Those of us old enough have personally witnessed and participated in the emergence of a new kind of labor pool.
It is composed of SMEs, functional experts, and a broad swath of specialized analysts of all stripes. In addition to
their own areas of technical and functional areas of expertise, this new workforce is expected to be able to write
and spell-check their own documents, enter their own data, answer their own mail, and be able to facilitate their
own technical meetings to collect cross-functional requirements. They are expected to play many operational
roles, interchangeably, invariably within the context of the same task, project or daily operational responsibility.
If the office worker of the 1970s could affect the decision-making processes and outcomes outside of the confines
of a strictly hierarchical decision-making structure, their ability - now a necessity by virtue of their new impact
and active involvement-increased exponentially.
All too often, we tend to think of business decisions and business decision-making as “big”; the salesman who
closes the big contract; the company that decides to come out with a game-changing product; or the organization
that decides to transform itself so that it operates more efficiently and effectively. We frequently forget the
immense number of detailed tasks, numerous meetings, critical milestones, and the incremental but crucial
smaller decisions by many different individuals who have cooperatively contributed to that larger decision.
We tend to forget, too, that after these decisions have been made that someone -- or more likely a group of
others - will be given the task to make them an operational reality. And the whole decision-making process starts
all over again. Whether we are talking about decisions, sales, or negotiation, or conflict resolution, we are
fundamentally talking about the same thing: groups of individuals cooperating, at times conflicting with each
other, and yet trying to work together to achieve a specific goal or solve a specific mutually held problem.
The problem-solving process never ends. It is all about problem-solving. Humans, of course, are not the only
problem-solving animals. But we do outpace all other species in our drive to solve - and in many cases invent -
solutions for ourselves that turn out to be problems for others.
Problems are solved one at a time, in the order that they present themselves. To better understand how to
problem-solve we need to better understand how we all fit in with these functional roles, and how we can all be
better problem-solvers.
References::
Coser, Lewis. 1956. The Functions of Social Conflict. New York: The Free Press.
Fresco. n.d. RACI Matrix Alternatives. Accessed Dec. 2022. https://frescopad.com/raci-matrix-
alternatives/.
Gulliver, P. H. 1971. Neighbors and Networks: The Idiom of Kinship in Social Action among the Ndendeuli
of Tanzania. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Lefcowitz, Mark J. 1975. "Functional Roles-a decision-making model." MCL & Associates, Inc. Accessed
Dec 2022. http://www.mcl-associates.com/downloads/Functional Roles-a decision-making model.pdf.
Levy, Marion J. 1957. "Review of The Functions of Social Conflict." Source: American Sociological Review
(Vol. 22, No. 1, Feb.) p. 112.
Maggio, Alessandro. Sep. 2021. The 10 Best RACI Alternatives. Accessed Dec. 2022.
https://www.ictshore.com/project-management/raci-alternatives/.
Perfony. n.d. RACI matrix: history of a managerial invention. Accessed Dec. 2022.
https://www.perfony.com/en/raci-matrix-history-of-a-managerial-invention/#:~:text=The%20RACI%
20matrix%20has%20no,%E2%80%9Cresponsibility%20attribution%20matrix%E2%80%9D.
Rigby, Peter. 1972. "Review of Neighbors and Networks: The Idiom of Kinship in Social Action among the
Ndendeuli of Tanzania." American Political Science Review (Vol 66, Issue 2, June) pp. 646 - 647.
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