Chapter 7 Managing people and works

Which of the following is true about a learning organization?

Organizations need to encourage employees to develop and use complex mental models.

_____ results from the tendency to make decisions based on preexisting beliefs even though evidence suggests that those beliefs are wrong.

Prior hypothesis bias

_______ can be part of a decision-making process in which a face-to-face meeting occurs, generating discussions and debates over a wide variety of alternatives from which to make the decision.

brainstorming

_____ is a decision maker's ability to discover original and novel ideas that lead to feasible alternative courses of action

creativity

Which of the following is a guideline to promoting individual creativity in an organization?

creativity results when employees have an opportunity to experiment

_________ is the process that managers use to deal with opportunities and threats by analyzing the options and making determinations, or decisions, about specific organizational goals and courses of actions.

decision making

Two separate groups of managers are given a problem to solve, and then each group presents its proposed solution to top management in an attempt to determine the best course of action. This process is called

dialectical inquiry

Corey has been looking at several alternative locations for his new facility and performs a cost-benefit analysis in order to determine the net financial payoff of each location. Which criterion of decision making is Corey focusing on?

economic feasibility

Intrapreneurial managers who leave their current organizations because of a lack of opportunity and start their own companies are known as

entrepreneurs

_______ are individuals who notice opportunities and decide how to mobilize the resources necessary to produce new and improved goods and services.

entrepreneurs

Having committed large amounts of manpower and money to his landscaping business, Tony continues to keep the business running despite incurring heavy losses. What is the source of Tony's cognitive bias?

escalating commitment

Which of the following is a source of bias that can adversely affect the way managers make decisions?

escalating commitment

Which of the following is a characteristic of an entrepreneur?

have a high need for achievement

Which of the following is true about choosing among alternative solutions?

identifying all relevant information doesn't mean that a manager has complete information

Which of the following is true about decision making?

in order to implement the chosen alternative, many subsequent and related decisions must be made

_____ is the term given to employees who engage in entrepreneurial activity and who are an important source of organizational creativity.

intrapreneurs

The last step in the managerial decision-making process is

learning from feedback

Building a(n) _____ is not easy and it requires that managers change their management assumptions radically.

learning organization

Which of the following is a guideline for managers to improve their decision-making abilities?

list the criteria that are being used to assess and evaluate alternatives and evaluate if the factors are appropriate

Which of the following is an advantage of group decision making?

managers can draw on the combined skills, competencies, and accumulated knowledge of group members

Which of the following is an assumption made by the classical model?

managers have access to all the information they need

According to the administrative model of decision making, why wouldn't managers be able to arrive at the optimum decision even if they had unlimited ability to evaluate information?

managers would not have complete information

Wash Ur Car, which operates five car washes, has to decide whether or not it should invest in the latest drying equipment. What type of decision does this represent for the organization?

nonprogrammed

________ decisions are nonroutine decisions made in response to novel situations in business.

nonprogrammed

In the classical model of decision making, the most appropriate decision possible in light of what is believed to be the most desirable consequences for the organization is known as the ____________ decision.

optimum

_____ is the process through which managers seek to improve employees' desire and ability to make decisions that raise organizational effectiveness.

organizational learning

The classical model specifies how decisions should be made. In other words it is

perscriptive

Dale, a manager, is assessing possible alternative solutions of a problem. Dale attempts to determine whether a possible alternative will threaten other company projects. Which criterion of decision making is Dale focusing on?

practicality

John, an operations manager, has chosen an alternative way to solve a problem he is faced with. Now John must decide whether the company has the capabilities and resources required to implement the alternative. Which criterion of decision making is he focusing on?

practicality

_____ refers to the loss of productivity in brainstorming sessions due to the unstructured nature of brainstorming.

production blocking

Based on guidelines established by the accounting manager, Jaime, the accounts payable clerk, makes payments to vendors in order to maximize discounts. What type of decision does this represent?

programmed

Decisions that are based on rules and guidelines are known as ______ decisions.

programmed

When paper supplies reach a minimum level, Ethan makes a call to the supplier to order more paper. What type of decision does this represent?

programmed decision

During the last several months at FSE Inc., workers' overtime hours have increased by more than 15%. Based on managers' decisions in the past, James Calloway, a top manager at FSE Inc. decided to hire additional staff. This is an example of

programmed decision making

The first step in the managerial decision-making process is to

recognize the need for a decision

_____ results from the tendency to have an incorrect view because of a bad experience with a single event or episode.

representatives bias

Li sees that several of his employees have creative talent. Which of the following should Li do to promote individual creativity?

reward the employees who come up with creative ideas

_____ is present when managers know the possible outcomes of a particular course of action and can assign probabilities to them.

risk

heuristics are

rules of thumb that simplify decision making

which of the following is an accurate description of satisficing?

searching for and choosing acceptable or satisfactory ways to respond to problems and opportunities rather than trying to make the optimal decision

_______ are mistakes in decision making that some managers make repeatedly.

systematic errors

Which of the following group decision-making processes is a written approach, without meeting face-to-face, to creative problem solving?

the Delphi technique

Which of the following is a reason why managers fail to generate creative solutions?

they find it difficult to view problems from a fresh perspective

Based on decades of research by Kahenman and Tversky, which of the following is true about the confidence managers (and all people) have regarding their intuition and reasoned judgments?

they tend to be overconfident about their intuition and judgements