MGT 3200 Test 2 Notes

What is the availability heuristic? What factors cause you to overestimate the frequency of an event? Underestimate the frequency of an event?

- Availability Heuristic: used when managers assess the frequency of an event by the degree to which those instances of that event are easily recalled in memory - Overestimate the frequency of events: events that evoke emotion, are vivid, are recent, are easily imagined, and are specific will be more available in memory (more easily recalled) - Underestimate the frequency of events: events that are unemotional in nature, are bland, are in the distant past, are difficult to imagine, or are vague - The easier something is to recall, the more frequent it is, the easier it is to recall - Events that are more emotional appear to be more frequent, the easier it is to recall

What are the advantages of specialized jobs?

-EFFICIENCY 1.) Less skilled employees can be hired because of the simplicity of job assignments 2.) Jobs can be learned in less time, thus reducing training costs 3.) Constant repetition leads to an area of limited expertise, which increases productivity 4.) More opportunities for utilizing the talents of the employee 5.) Work is performed quicker because the employees do not lose time shifting from one activity to another 6.) Dependence on particular employee skills is minimized (Remember Taylor wanted employees to be interchangeable)

What does the traditional economic model assume about decision-makers? (2 assumptions)

1) Managers seek to maximize benefits (or minimize costs) ("ECONOMIC MAN") 2) Managers are completely rational

What are the disadvantages of a functional design?

1. Coordination is achieved at higher levels of the organization. This causes the coordination process to take longer. The larger the number of departments the harder it is to coordinate work units. 2. No common concern for the overall mission of the organization. People identify with specialty not with overall tasks. 3. Interdepartmental cooperation is a problem due to difficult values, goals, etc... 4. Cost of coordination can be high 5. Employees identify with specialty, which makes changes difficult 6. Preparation of broadly trained managers is limited. Main type of manager developed in the functional design is a functional manager. 7. Client satisfaction can be lower than with other designs because of the coordination problems associated with this design. 8. Slow to respond to environmental change 9. Slow to innovate

What are the Four rules in Brainstorming?

1. Criticism is prohibited 2. "Freewheeling" is welcomed-free association, the more off the wall an idea, the better 3. Quantity is wanted, don't worry about quality 4. Combination and improvement is sought

How is NGT different from brainstorming and synetics?

1. Does not rely on free association of ideas 2. It purposely restricts verval interaction

What are the five steps in redesigning a job so it will be enriched? What happens at each step and what task characteristics are increased?

1. Form Natural Work Units - As much as possible, individuals are grouped together to form a meaningful work unit. This unit is given continuing responsibility for a body of related work or a "whole" piece of work. The objective here is to increase the employee's feeling of "ownership" over their job. Forming natural work units should increase task identity and task significance. 2. Combining Tasks - Combine several tasks into a larger job requiring a broader range of skills. This is an attempt to increase skill variety and task identity. 3. Establishing Client Relationships - As much as possible employees are put into contact with people who use their product or service such as customers. This is designed to increase skill variety, task significance, autonomy, and feedback. 4. Vertical Loading-Most Important Step - Here the gap between doing and controlling is closed. The employees are given more latitude in and responsibility for their jobs. This step primarily increases autonomy. However, it also increases all the other characteristics. 5. Opening feedback channels - Employees are provided with increased feedback on their performances by opening up the communication channels. Primarily it's an attempt to increase performance feedback. Feedback should be a continuous, on-going process. Here you allow people to check the quality of their own work. This helps them provide their own feedback which is seen as most valid type of feedback. In vertical loading, the person as allowed to set schedules, establish work pace, choose work methods, develop other workers and overall problem-solve. Problem solving involves trouble-shooting and crisis management.

What are the disadvantages of job enrichment?

1. Some workers may not want enriched jobs, place greater demands on workers. 2. Workers may not have the skills necessary to perform enriched jobs, training costs and difficult to train certain skills required. 3. Employees may want greater extrinsic rewards such as pay due to greater responsibility. 4. Results in layoffs. 5. Supervisors of employees have "disenriched" jobs; organizations may do away with supervision... loss of power and even job loss 6. Potential benefits may not offset technological costs. 7. Poor employee performance in productivity.

When does one use the functional design?

1. When you have a stable environment 2. When you have one or a few product lines 3. When efficiency and quality are your goals 4. When the organization is small to medium in size

What are the steps in NGT?

1.) 7-9 group members familiarize themselves with the problem 2.) Group members working silently and alone generate solutions 3.) Share ideas in round robin manner 4.) Evaluate the ideas in round robin manner 5.) Vote privately ranking ideas from best to worst. Discuss the outcome of the vote and vote again

What are the three aspects of job design?

1.) A job's content (Major task duties and responsibilities) 2.) The work methods or procedures to be used in its performance 3.) How is it related to other jobs in the organization (and the people you work with)

What are the disadvantages of specialized jobs?

1.) Low employee motivation 2.) Low job satisfaction 3.) Low quality job performance 4.) High turnover (Quitting jobs) 5.) High absenteeism 6.) Sabotage and strikes 7.) Alcohol and drug abuse >Quantity will stay the same, quality will decrease

When does a manager (under what conditions) use individual decision making rather than group decision making?

1.) When time is limited 2.) When the decision maker has all the relevant knowledge and expertise to solve the problem 3.) When acceptance of the decision is not an issue. You are sure employees will accept it. 4.) When subordinates do not get along well. There might be a personal conflict between them. 5.) When subordinates do not share the organization's goals and there is distrust between the manager and labor.

What are the advantages of a functional design?

Advantages: 1. Lots of specialization provides the best development of expertise because of its emphasis on functional interest within specialized departments. 2. Results in efficient use of resources because you don't duplicate specialists and you achieve economies of scale and overhead. Also more efficient because of the greater focus on specialization. 3. Provides a simple communication network 4. Simplifies training of functional specialists 5. Gives status to major functional areas 6. Preserves strategic control at the top management levels 7. Provides career path for specialists- functional departments help reinforce and enhance development of expertise

What's the problem with synectics?

As soon as you generate a solution, you evaluate the idea. Thus, the generation of ideas and the evaluation of ideas occur together, stifling creativity. It is also costly and time consuming.

What is an assembly effect? Process loss?

Assembly Effects- Positive consequences of bringing a group of people together such as synergy, more information, diverse veiwpoints, checking errors, and substantive conflicts Process Loss- Negative consequences such as destructive, interpersonal conflict, free-riding or social loafing, domination by a few, and more time and expenses

What task characteristic is job depth similar to?

Autonomy

Where is it more difficult to coordinate within departments or between departments? Why?

Between departments because different departments have different goals.

What is bounded rationality? What three things bound one's rationality?

Bounded Rationality: you don't see everything—you try, but it is limited A manager's rationality is bounded by these three things: 1. Limited mental capacity 2. Emotions 3. Unforseeability of future events.

Under what decision-making condition do decisions get made in the traditional economic model?

Certainty

What step in the redesign process is job enlargement?

Combining Tasks

What is the basic purpose of a brainstorming session?

Come up with as many ideas as possible Brainstorming focuses on QUANTITY

What does the behavioral model assume about decision-makers?

Decisions are made under "bounded rationality" rather than complete—satisfying rather than maximizing. How decisions are actually made

What is decision-making under conditions of risk?

Decisions under risk are most common. This condition involves a lack of complete certainty regarding the outcomes of various alternatives, but an awareness of the probabilities associated with their occurrence. Thus, alternatives are known but outcomes are in doubt. For example, when you get ready to roll a die you know they are six alternatives but the outcome of the roll is n doubt. It's a gamble.

In making decisions, do people pay more attention to descriptive, qualitative information or statistical, quantitative information?

Descriptive and qualitative information. When people make judgements they often ignore relevant base-data (statistical data) and make their decisions using qualitative, descriptive data.

When someone is hypo-sensitive to their environment, what type of job design should they be given? Why?

Enriched job, because it provides them with a lot of stimulation and challenge

What are operations research techniques? What are they designed to do? What kind of data do they usually require? Are they an aid or substitute for managerial decision-making? What do managers need to think critically about when they use these techniques? Are they applicable to all decisions that managers make?

Examples of operations research techniques are probability analysis, queuing theory, linear programming and stimulation. Operations research techniques improve the evaluation of alternatives by making the evaluation more systemic. They are and aid for managerial decision making. Managers need quantitative data when using this technique. Only as good as the numbers they are based on (quantitative data) MOST HELPFUL in RISK

In synectics, what is the job of the facilitator? Technical expert?

Facilitator- Helps generate ideas. Job is to structure the problems and helps to lead the discussion away from the traditional ways of thinking. They help individuals overcome internal inhibitions resulting from traditional ways of perceiving and thinking. They can also use the superhero technique to stimulate creativity. Technical Expert- Help you evaluate ideas

What two creativity techniques does synectics use in helping the group to generate better ideas?

Fantasy and Analogy

What is the gambler's fallacy?

Gamblers will think it is nearly a sure thing. When something goes against you so many ties in a row, it is bound to go in your favor this time. Ager 10 bad hands of poker, the poker player believes that he or she is due for a good hand. It is the mistaken belief that an event that has not occurred for some time is likely to occur in the near future. Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not corrected as change unfolds. They are merely diluted.

What is the stepladder technique?

Get rid of social loafing and makes you reconsider ideas: Step 1- 2 person group Step 2- 3 person group (2 original members + 1 new) Step 3- 4 person group (3 original members + 1 new) Step 4- 5 person group (4 original members + 1 new)

What is the leveling effect?

Group decisions often involve considerable compromise which may lead to less than optimal decisions being made. It lowers quality but raises acceptability. Both a process loss and an assembly effect.

What is decision-making under conditions of certainty?

Managers know all available alternatives and outcomes associated with each; 100% probability

Rank the following in terms of decision making accuracy: group, average individual in the group, and best member in the group?

Group decisions will tend to be more accurate. The groups research indicates that groups, on average, make better quality decisions than individuals, but they are seldom better than the performance of the best individual in the group

Which leads to greater acceptance of the decision and better implementation of the decision: individual or group decision making?

Group is better than individual decision-making in acceptance and implementation

What is a heuristic? What are the advantages of and disadvantages of heuristics?

Heuristic: a labor saving device, a short cut, a rule of thumb Advantages: • Time savings • They may produce more good decisions than bad decisions • Makes you more efficient Disadvantages: • We adopt heuristics often times without being aware of them. They implicitly guide our judgment. This can be a major drawback if we over rely on them, they can lead to errors, sometimes severe errors. • Heuristics at times can lead us to faulty conclusions. When heuristics lead to errors in judgment, they are called biases.

What is the superhero technique?

Imagining you are a superhero while thinking of ideas or solutions to problems because superheroes are able to do things regular people an not. Allows you to think outside the box.

Which is more efficient: group or individual decision making? (consider both short term and long term efficiency)

In the short run, individual decision making is more efficient because it takes less time and expense. In the long run, group decision making may be more efficient because group decisions often lead to better implementation of the decision.

In making decisions, people often violate the law of large numbers. What does that mean? Why does it occur?

Individuals tend to ignore the implications of sample size and tend to attribute greater stability to results obtained from small samples than is warranted. People often ignore the judgement advice of others when choosing between 2 objects and substitute their own initial impression (brief) as the sole basis for choice because they don't recognize the importance of large numbers. The larger the sample size, the more reliable it is. People will go with their own sample of small numbers opposed to a large sample from family and friends.

What is instrumental motivation? Expressive motivation?

Instrumental motivation- sees work as a means to end such as a paycheck. Expressive motivation- sees work, as an end in itself such as wants to grow through his work or wants personal fulfillment and satisfaction from the work itself.

The motivational benefits of job enlargement are short-lived or long-lived?

It has limited success in motivating employees. The reason is that similar tasks don't often provide significant challenge and stimulation. Two boring tasks don't make a challenging job.

What is group decision making a function of?

It is a function of individual efforts plus assembly effects minus process loss. GDM= Individual Efforts/Contributions + Assembly Effects - Process Losses You hope the individual contributions and assembly affects outnumber process losses

What are the defining characteristics of the Delphi technique?

It is just like NGT but the members never meet ad they remain anonymous

What two task characteristics does job enlargement increase?

Job enlargement BROADENS scope/breadth and task identity

What is the purpose of job enlargement?

Job enlargement is the allocation of a wider variety of similar tasks (requiring the same skill level) to an employee in order to make the job more of a challenge. >It's intent is to keep one from getting bored so quickly >However, these new tasks are often easily learned and do not present much of a challenge

What is the functional organizational design? How are activities grouped?

Large mass production firms. Groups its activities into separate units or departments in which each undertakes a distinctive function—marketing, production, etc... so you have specialization and a focused concentration of functional activities.

What job design is least prevalent today? Most prevalent today?

Least- Craft jobs Most- Specialized jobs

Which decision-making condition is most common? Least common? Most difficult?

Most common: risk—0%-100% probabilities Least common: certainty—100% probabilities Most difficult: uncertainty—no probabilities

Under what decision-making conditions do decisions get made in the behavioral model?

Most likely risk, but also uncertainty

How does the framing of a decision affect decision-making? Positive framing? Negative framing?

Most people are risk-adverse (avoidant) when the decision is framed positively (in terms of gain) and most people are risk-seeking when the question is formed negatively (in terms of loss). This occurs even when the choices are the same. People find the pain associated with losing X is generally greater than the pleasure associated with winning X. When people start to lose, they take more risk trying to recoup their loss Positive frame= less risk Negative frame= more risk

1. Is decision-making a function of management?

No, it's part of all functions Most closely associated with planning

Can inhibitions be totally eliminated in brainstorming sessions?

No. Inhibition in generating creative ideas can not be completely eliminated due to a number of factors such as non-verbal communication and power differences among members. (Don't want to seem stupid in front of your boss)

What function of management is concerned with job design and organizational design?

Organizing is the process by which employees and their jobs are related to each other for accomplishing organizational objectives.

What is feedback?

Performance feedback is the degree to which employees, as they are working, receive information that reveals how well they are performing on the job. Feedback can come from co-workers, supervisors, subordinates, clients or even the job itself. Also, feedback can come from performance appraisal, awards and promotions, and personal evaluations of one's own feelings.

What is the stepladder technique designed to prevent? Promote?

Prevent- Recirculation of ideas and overlooking obvious flaws Promote- New ideas and evaluations of current ideas

What is the primitive/agency organizational design? What are its advantages/disadvantages?

Primitive agency design- has one boss and a few employees, all employees report to the boss and he provides the necessary coordination thru personal supervision. Each employee acts as an agent or extension of the boss who coordinates all company activities and managerial tasks. Advantage- flexible, disadvantage- breaks down under conditions of complexity because of limited information. Predominant during the beginning of the industrial revolution

What is the product design? How are activities grouped?

Product design- each major product line is administered through a separate and semi-autonomous division. Allows both responsiveness to the environment and efficient coordination of a large number of specialized units. Grouped together to perform all duties necessary to produced an individual good or service.

3. What's the difference between programmed and non-programmed decisions?

Programmed decisions are specific procedures that have been developed for repetitive and routine problems. Thus, decisions are programmed to the extent that they are repetitive and routine, and a specific procedure has been developed for handling them. Non-programmed decisions are specific to management problems that are novel and unique. They are complex and unstructured. Thus, there is no established procedure for handling them, either because it has not arisen in exactly the same manner before or because is complex or extremely important. Such decisions deserve special treatment.

Do managers make more programmed or non-programmed decisions, in general?

Programmed, it makes us more efficient -Non programmed decisions increase as you move up the managerial pyramid.

How do programmed/non-programmed decisions and the different decision-making conditions relate?

Programmed: certainty and risk Non-programmed: uncertainty and risk **Every programmed decision was at one point or another a non-programmed decision**

What is the representativeness heuristic? What's the problem with this heuristic?

Representativeness Heuristic: reflects the tendency of managers to assess the likelihood of an occurrence by matching it with a preexisting category (i.e. stereotype) Problem: stereotypes don't allow us to see the real person—our perceptions based on these stereotypes are biased and unfair. The stereotype doesn't allow us to see the uniqueness of the individual

How do economic factors affect redesigning of jobs?

Required or necessary resources may not be available to improve or redesign jobs—may not have enough money to buy a new piece of equipment or hire a job design specialist. -It is very expensive b/c you may have to redesign the whole thing

Where do you have greater creativity: five individuals generating ideas alone or those same five individuals generating ideas as a group?

Research has shown that individuals working alone generate more and better ideas than those same individuals working in a group

What is satisficing? How does it differ from maximizing? Is it irrational?

Satisficing: managers select the 1st alternative that meets a minimally acceptable standard than going through and evaluating all the alternatives and selecting the best one. Can lead to a maximizing situation, but you have to get lucky and you won't know it occurred Satisficing is a heuristic— it may be quite sensible considering the limits of human information processing, the costs of searching for and identifying alternatives, and the uncertainty of future events

What is job rotation?

Shifting workers through a set of jobs in planned sequence

What task characteristic(s) is job breadth similar to?

Skill Variety

What is the Yerkes-Dodson law? (Arousal and performance are related in what manner?)

Some people are hyper-sensitive which means they need relatively little stimulation to get them to their activation level (the moderate level of arousal which leads to high performance) whereas hypo-sensitive which means they need a lot of stimulation from their external environment to achieve their activation level. It's an inverted U shape where optimal performance is at the top.

What is a specialized job and how does it load on the five task characteristics?

Specialization results from the diversion of an activity into smaller task elements. This diversion of labor leads to specialists who have limited area of expertise. Specialized jobs are low on every job characteristic except feedback.

When someone is hyper-sensitive to their environment, what type of job design should they be given? Why?

Specialized job, because the environment provides very little stimulation

What type of motivation is best suited to specialized jobs? Enriched jobs?

Specialized jobs- ability Enriched jobs- motivation

How does strategy influence job design?

Strategy of the organization should drive the design of jobs. Different job design strategies will be needed for different strategies.

What is job breadth and job depth?

The breadth/range of a job refers to the number of tasks that a jobholder performs. Job breadth/range varies from few to many different tasks. Jobs with relatively few tasks (low job breadth/range) are more specialized than those with many tasks (high job breadth/range). HORIZONTAL LOADINGS. -Breadth is like skill variety (horizontal) -Depth is most like autonomy The depth of a job refers to the amount of discretion that an individual has to decide job activities and job outcomes. Job depth varies from little to considerable discretion in the choice of activities and outcomes. Relatively little depth is characteristic of relatively specialized jobs. VERTICAL LOADINGS.

What does the irrational/implicit favorite model of decision-making say about decision-making?

The decision maker distorts the information about the implicit favorite and the other alternatives so that the positive features of the implicit favorite are highlighted. Basically, the decision maker distorts information and selects decision rules in order to favor their implicit favorite. This model assumes that the decision maker simply goes through the motions of generating and evaluating more alternatives as a way to justify their initial choice (favorite).

What is skill variety?

The degree to which a job requires the employees to perform a wide range of operations in their work and/or the degree to which employees must use a variety of equipment and procedures in their work. >High skill variety jobs require more education, more training, and more experience; they provide more challenge, allow more creativity and give more prestige than low skill variety jobs

What are some problems that can be encountered when using the Delphi technique?

The design of the questionnaire (this is what group members use to send in their solutions and evaluation to the problem) can limit the results obtained, it can be extremely time-consuming, even more so than other techniques (several days or weeks may elapse between steps), and members interest and motivation may decline if too much time passes between steps.

What is autonomy?

The extent to which employees have a mojor say in scheduling their work, selecting the equipment and methods they will use, checking their own work (quality control), and deciding the procedures to be followed >Autonomy is the extent to which they are allowed to make important decisions regarding their jobs >JOB DEPTH

What is task identity?

The extent to which employees to do an entire or while piece of work and clearly identify with the results of their effort >Specialized jobs are low in task identity because the employee only performs a small segment of a job >Task identity is increased when an employe completes a job from beginning to end >The ability to identify the work you have done, complete a whole piece of work

What is task significance?

The extent to which the job and its performance exert a considerable impact on the lives of others. With high task significance there is a feeling of accomplishment. Specialized jobs are LOW in task significance.

What are the advantages of job enrichment?

The intent of enriched jobs is to increase the meaningfulness of work and the experienced responsibility of work outcomes by increasing job content. Jobs are enriched by allowing employees greater freedom or self-direction and the opportunity to perform interesting and challenging work (improve quality of work life, QWL). Benefits of enriched jobs: 1. High employee motivation. 2. High job satisfaction. 3. High quality job performance. 4. Low absenteeism. 5. Low turnover (quitting job).

What is job enrichment? How is it different from job enlargement?

The job enrichment strategy represents a move backward toward craft jobs where employees perform a larger and more complete segment of the work. This type of job design strategy may be the result of increasing educational and socioeconomic levels in society. (Autonomy is the main difference b/w enrichment and enlargement) Job enlargement is the allocation of a wider variety of similar tasks (requiring the same skill level) to an employee in order to make the job more of a challenge. Its intent is to keep one from getting bored so quickly. Job enrichment necessarily involves job enlargement, but job enlargement doesn't necessarily lead to job enrichment. Example form the notes, you can give a person twenty more boring things to do (job enlargement), but it will not give the person discretion over his job (job enrichment)

What is the key to making good decisions under risk?

The key element in decision making under conditions of risk is accurately determining the probabilities associated with each alternative

How does technology affect job redesign efforts?

The more the design of the job is influenced by technological factors or technology the less job design and flexibility that exist.

What is the relationship between specialization and coordination according to the specialization-coordination dilemma?

The more you specialize the more difficult it is to coordinate the different work units.

What is the optimal size for a decision making group?

The optimal size for a group (one that makes the best decisions) is 5-7 people. Preferably you should have odd-numbered groups (5 or 7)

What research is NGT based on?

This technique was inspired by research that discovered more and better ideas are discovered by several persons working alone/separately than by the same persons working in an interacting group. Thus, NGT is a group "in name only".

Why do we make decisions as managers?

To accomplish goals efficiently

What in NGT does one try to eliminate to improve the decision-making process?

Try to eliminate group process

What employee factors should be taken into consideration when designing jobs?

Two primary factors are: ability and motivation. Ability: managers simply should not design jobs that require greater ability than the employee possesses. Motivation: should tailor the design of the job to the motivation of the employee.

What types of decisions are made irrationally?

Types of decisions that are made irrationally are ones that the decision maker has already made up their mind before hearing other arguments. Also ones that go against what is proven to work. Uncertainty—decisions with little information

How do unions feel about any attempt from management to redesign jobs?

Unions have both direct and indirect influences on job design. Have generally resisted job design efforts- see them as schemes to get more work out of fewer employees

What step in the redesign process is most important?

Vertical Loading

What is decision-making under conditions of uncertainty?

When decisions are made under conditions of uncertainty managers don't know alternatives, their potential outcomes, or the probability of the outcomes occurrence. These decisions are the most difficult. In such situations, a manager has no knowledge on which to estimate the probability of various outcomes. Decisions under uncertainty generally occur in cases where there is no historical data available from which to infer probabilities or in instances that are so novel and complex it's impossible to make comparative judgments. The most common case for this type of decision-making involves the introduction of new technology.

What is meant by the term "confirmatory bias" in decision-making?

When you have found some information that mirrors my own current outlook. I gravitate and associate more closely with this information as it is in tune with what I currently already believe.

What are the three moderators that influence the effectiveness of job enrichment? How do they influence it?

With respect to moderators, the model states that the high growth need strength person is more responsive to job enrichment; that when people are dissatisfied with context factors such as pay, supervision, and company policy they are less responsive to job enrichment; and that people with weak skills and limited knowledge will not be as responsive to job enrichment.

What is the reasoning behind the Delphi technique?

Without any group interaction, no group member can feel the judgement of their ideas and are not influenced by social and physiological pressures.