Revista Argentina de Clínica Psicológica 2020, Vol. XXIX, N°1, 316-321
DOI: 10.24205/03276716.2020.42 316
A
PPLICATION OF
M
ENTAL
H
EALTH AND
E
MOTIONAL
E
MPOWERMENT
IN
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PORTS
M
ANAGEMENT
D
ECISION
-M
AKING
B
ASED ON
C
OGNITIVE
N
EUROSCIENCE
Wenrui Yang
*Abstract
In team management, decision-making is a gradual constructive process closely related to cognitive neuroscience of the human brain. Based on the theory of cognitive neuroscience, this paper explores the impacts of empowering decision-makers to the decision-making of sports management, using the natural connection between decision-making and mental health. A questionnaire survey was carried out among sports managers of 12 colleges in China. Through the analysis of the survey results, it is learned that the four dimensions of mental health and emotional empowerment all have great impacts on decision quality; self-efficacy has the most significant impacts, followed by work meaning, work significance and autonomy; an empowering decision-maker can greatly improve sports management, due to the high self-efficacy and the autonomy he/she gives to team members. This research provides a valuable reference for applying cognitive neuroscience in empowered decision-making.
Key words: Team Management, Management Decision-Making, Cognitive Neuroscience, Sports Management, Mental Health.
Received: 12-04-19 | Accepted: 11-10-19
INTRODUCTION
Management decision-making is the degree to which an individual grasp the optimality or correctness of his decision-making when making decisions or judgments in the management process. Decision-making can also influence people's cognitive functions, such as planning follow-up decisions, integrating decision-making experience, and verifying correct decisions (Moran, Guillot, Macintyre et al., 2012). Nowadays, the changes in the theme of the knowledge age have an important impact on the sports management paradigm. The previously validated and recognized management models, experiences, organizations, etc. need to be constantly updated and evolved fundamentally
Department of Physical Education, Inner Mongolia University of Finance and Economics, Hohhot 010070, China . E-Mail: [email protected]
to meet the requirements of modern sports management (Bucci, 2018; Barker, Neil, & Fletcher, 2016). When making decisions, managers need to know more related information and knowledge. They must also make comprehensive and optimal decisions by gathering knowledge and integrating distracted information during the process (Lidor & Ronnie, 2018). The purpose of empowerment is to apply knowledge. In management decision-making, the distribution of resources determines the allocation of power, while resources and decisions need to be completed through the empowerment (Cook & Fletcher, 2017).
Decision-making has a natural and important connection with the mental health and emotions. In terms of the general process in decision-making, information search, program design and selection, and implementation all require decision-making (Dixon, Lee, & Ghaye, 2016). When managers make management decisions, they are vulnerable to
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external environmental factors, resulting in certain errors, and making it difficult to quantify the measurement results. Cognitive neuroscience can be used to measure the intrinsic motivation level of decision makers in real time and objectively (Trousselard, Demont, Malgoyre et al., 2014). Empowering decision-making from the perspective of psychological empowerment is a series of managers’ behaviours to enhance work motivation. The study on the intermediary mechanism for the comprehensive impact of mental health and emotional empowerment decision-makers on the sports teams, which can establish a new calibration variable on the effectiveness of empowering decision makers (Maunsell, Lauzier, Brunet et al., 2014; Schlesinger, Klenk, & Nagel, 2015). It’s certain that the empowerment is not profitable all along. Empowered decision makers are fundamentally selfish, and decision makers have more or less different actual goals (Peterson & Evans, 2003). Based on the cognitive neuroscience, this paper analyses the application of empowered decision makers in sports management decision making by means of the connections between decision-making and mental health or emotions.
DECISION MAKING AND EMPOWERMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH AND EMOTIONS
In the era of knowledge economy, the management environment is complex and dynamic, making it particularly difficult to make scientific decision-making. Taking sports management as an example, the activities in the management organization become more and more complex and huge, and the decision-makers decide the degree of management, but the decision makers' decisions are influenced by psychological activities (Johnson & Marcia, 2016). In the decision-making process, the goals and expectations of the decision-makers are inconsistent, the rights and responsibilities of different decision-makers vary, and the individual's preferences and goals lead the individuals to acquire different information (Cooper & Shallice, 2010). Using the cognitive neuroscience in psychology, it is possible to analyse the influence of various psychological behaviours derived from the decision-makers’ cognitive and behavioural interactions on their decision-making preferences (Barch, Albaugh, Avenevoli et al., 2017).
In related research, decision-making and
management are correlated. During the
management process, the core of rights is decision-making power, and empowerment is the
decentralization of decision-making power. Figure 1 shows the dimensions of mental health and emotional empowerment in current research, including self-efficacy, capability, job meaning, selectivity, autonomy, work influence, boundary and job control, in which the work meaning, self-efficacy, autonomy and work influence are most commonly used ones. Figure 2 shows the impact of empowerment on the confidence of decision makers. That is, when the decision makers have high confidence, the degree of support is higher. Then, the supporters bring confidence to the decision makers, significantly higher than the opponents.
Figure 1
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Mental health and emotional
empowerment dimensions
Mental Health and emotional empowerment
dimensions
Self-efficacy
Capability
Job significance
Selectivity
Autonomy
Work influence
Boundary and work control
Figure 2
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The impact of empowerment on
the confidence of decision makers
0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0
High Medium
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Low
Oppose Support
INFLUENCE OF EMPOWERING DECISION
MAKERS ON SPORTS MANAGEMENT
Research design and data verification
In sports management, empowering the sports team members shall enhance their work motivation at a higher level. For the entire management team,
APPLICATION OF MENTAL HEALTH AND EMOTIONAL EMPOWERMENT IN SPORTS MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING BASED ON COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 318
the task objectives of the team members are consistent with the overall objectives of the team. Once the empowered work is completed, the goals of the team shall be realized accordingly. The empowered decision makers from the perspective of mental health and emotional empowerment need to emphasize work significance, deliver high performance confidence, promote participatory decision-making, and provide autonomy to weaken bureaucratic constraints. This paper investigates the sports management teams of 12 colleges and universities. The team leader filled in for the two indicators of management performance and management task complexity. The empowered decision-makers completed the questionnaires about the two variables such as the empowering decision makers and learning of management team, and it’s found that there is a strong correlation between these two factor variables.
Empirical research
The section studies the variables: the empowering decision makers and management team learning, and performs the correlation analysis based on the perceived evaluation of the proposed content by each team. The learning of management team includes team communication, team reflection, and team record. The analysis shows that these four dimensions of management team learning are significantly related to their learning performance, and there is a significant positive correlation between team communication, team reflection and team performance. The empowering
decision-makers can have more time and experience to learn the teams to be managed, so as to provide more autonomy for sports management team members and improve team performance. Therefore, the acquisition of decision-makers plays an intermediary role in managing team performance processes. The complexity of the management task has a regulating role in the influencing process of work significance on the team performance. For a better explanation, Figure 3 shows the effect of the work significance and the performance on the management team performance with different complexity of the sports management task. Figure 3(a) shows clearly that with the low complexity of management tasks, the positive impact of work significance on team performance is small; Figure 3(b) clearly shows that with the low complexity of management tasks, the positive impact on team performance is positive.
IMPACT OF MENTAL HEALTH AND EMOTIONAL EMPOWERMENT ON SPORTS MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING
Model construction and research hypothesis In the sports management team, the interaction process of team members has a good intermediary role in team work performance. The sports management team process includes three dimensions: orientation, action, and interpersonal relationship. According to cognitive neuroscience, the decision-making process is explained as: comprehensively searching for relevant information before making decisions, and actively thinking and
Figure 3
.
The role of work meaning and the transmission of performance confidence on the
complexity of sports management tasks
5.95 6.00 6.05 6.10 6.15 6.20 6.25 6.30 6.35 6.40
High emphasis on work meaning
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Low emphasis on work meaning
Low complexity of sports management tasks High complexity of sports management tasks
6.00 6.05 6.10 6.15 6.20 6.25 6.30 6.35 6.40
High pass high performance
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Low pass high performance
Low complexity of sports management tasks High complexity of sports management tasks
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Figure 4.
Mental health and emotional empowerment, personal knowledge ability and sports
management decision-making performance relationship model
Mental health and emotional empowerment
Personal knowledge organization
Management decision making performance
Job significance
Autonomy
Self-efficacy
Influence
Cognitive need
Knowledge interaction
Sports management decision-making
performance
finding causal relationships to make relevant judgments. It can reflect the effective integration of the management team knowledge, when the decision maker's point of view conflicts with other team members. Figure 4 shows the relationship
between mental health and emotional
empowerment, personal knowledge ability, and sports management decision-making performance, which were taken as the independent variable, intermediate variable and outcome variable respectively. It’s assumed that the four dimensions of mental health and emotional empowerment have positive effects on individual knowledge ability and decision-making performance.
Sample results and preliminary analysis In order to verify the hypothesis proposed in Section 4.1, we conducted a questionnaire on the leaders of the sports management team, the empowering decision makers, and the team members. Table 1 lists the questionnaires of mental health and emotional empowerment.
Figure 5.
Age distribution of survey samples
4.5%
7.21%
21.62%
31.53%
22.52%
12.61%
25-30 30-35 35-40 40-45 45-50 ＞50
Figure 6.
Reliability testing of various factors
in
mental
health
and
emotional
empowerment
0.45 0.50 0.55 0.60 0.65 0.70
L K G I H G F E D C B A
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Figure 7.
Factor load of factor items in
mental
health
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emotional
empowerment scale
0.60 0.65 0.70 0.75 0.80 0.85
L K G I H G F E D C B A
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APPLICATION OF MENTAL HEALTH AND EMOTIONAL EMPOWERMENT IN SPORTS MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING BASED ON COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE 320
Table 1.
Mental health and emotional authorization questionnaire
Number Measurement index Item A
Work meaning
My work is meaningful to me.
B I am very sure about the meaning of my work.
C Work is very important to me
D
Autonomy
At work, I can make my own decisions
E I will arrange my own work plan and working method
F At work, I can complete the task in my own way.
G
Self-efficacy I can use my skills to deal with the difficulties in my work
H I believe that I can complete the task of organizational mating
I
Influence
I can communicate my point of view to my colleagues
G My boss will take my advice and ideas
K My influence is of great importance to the completion of the work
L My influence represents your affirmation of some of my abilities
Table 2.
Regression analysis of mental health and emotional authority and sports management
decision
Independent variable Regression coefficients Standard regression coefficient t value Significant
B Std. Error Bata
Job significance 0.189 0.082 0.194 2.489 0.024 Autonomy 0.215 0.095 0.145 1.830 0.087 Self-efficacy 0.374 0.091 0.383 4.475 0.009 Influence 0.260 0.108 0.216 2.552 0.021
Figure 5 shows the age distribution of the survey samples, in which more than 50% of the empowering decision makers are between 35-45 years old. Before data analysis, the consistency and stability analysis of the obtained samples were performed to correct the relevant total correlation values, and it’s considered acceptable if the detected reliability value was greater than 0.45. Figure 6 shows the reliability test of each factor item for the mental health and emotional empowerment, where the H item in the self-efficacy had the highest detected reliability value; the F item in the self-efficacy the lowest reliability value, but all the item values were all greater than 0.45, that is, the data value is reliable. Validity analysis is the most effective feature for analysing and measuring test indicators; factor load greater than 0.5 can be considered to be very important and significant. Figure 7 shows the factor load of each factor item in mental health and emotional empowerment table, which clearly indicates that the load factors are all greater than 0.5, and have a significant impact. The analysis shows that there exists the consistency and stability between the samples, and the regression analysis was carried out for each variable. Table 2 lists the regression analysis results of different variables about mental health/emotional empowerment and sports management decision-making. It can be clearly seen that the four
dimensions of mental health and emotional empowerment are highly correlated to personal knowledge ability and decision-making performance, among which self-efficacy is the most significant, followed by work meaning and influence, and the autonomy is relatively low significant.
CONCLUSIONS
Based on the cognitive neurology, this paper analyses the application of empowering decision-makers in sports management decision-making using the connections between the decision-making and mental health or emotions. The specific conclusions are as follows:
(1) Decision-making and management are correlated. In the management process, the core of rights is decision-making power, and empowering is the decentralization of decision-making power. when the decision makers have high confidence, the degree of support is higher. Then, the supporters bring confidence to the decision makers, significantly higher than the opponents.
(2) The empowering decision makers have more time and experience to contact the team to be managed, so as to provide more autonomy for sports management team members, help to improve the management team performance; work significance has little positive impact on team
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performance, while passing performance has a positive impact on team performance.
(3) The four dimensions of mental health and emotional empowerment are highly correlated to personal knowledge ability and decision-making performance, among which self-efficacy is the most significant, followed by work meaning and influence, and the autonomy is relatively low.
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