Decision Style Choices of University Basketball Coaches and Players

Abstract

Ninety-nine male and female players and 22 coaches of university basketball teams expressed their choice of one of five decision styles in each of 32 decision situations (cases). The cases were defined by two levels of each of five problem attributes (quality requirement, coach's information, problem complexity, acceptance requirement, and team integration). The results showed that male and female players differed in their preference for a decision style in only one of the 32 cases whereas the coaches' preferred decision style differed from both the male and female players' in 8 cases. Overall, the coaches chose more autocratic styles than the players; however, even the players tended to be more oriented toward autocratic decision making than toward participative decision making. The situational differences explained three times as much variance as did individual differences, and the effects of the problem attributes tended to be similar in all three groups.