Management Chapter 8- Learning & Decision Making

Anchoring, framing, and contrast are examples of

decision making bias

continuous reinforcement

reinforcing the desired response every time it occurs. High potential level of performance, but difficult to maintain. Ex: praise

Learning impact on organizational commitment

weak positive effect- employees who gain more knowledge and skill tend to have slightly higher levels of affective commitment

Explicit knowledge

infor that is relatively easy to communicate. Main part of what companies teach during training. Readily available to most, can be learned through books, always conscious and accessible info, general info.

negative reinforcement

Negative reinforcement is when an unwanted outcome is removed following a desired behavior, increasing the likelihood that the behavior will appear again. For example: I had a boss who used to yell at my team when we did not submit progress reports by her deadlines. To avoid her yelling at me, I worked ahead to make sure I got the stupid reports in on time. She stopped yelling at my team once we increased the desired behavior.

pitfalls impacting day to day decisions

Negotiations, investment/project decisions, hiring/evaluation decisions, and marketing decisions. Repaired by improved awareness, education, experience, and using formal tools, stats, data, and decision models and aids.

Reinforcement

BF Skinner. The method of encouraging or discouraging continued behavior by creating consequences for the behavior. Positive reinforcement for desired behavior. Punishment for undesired.

faulty decision making

Bad decisions are made whereas alternative choices would have been more effective.

Framework for deciding why a behavior occured

Behavior is observed 1. Consensus: did others act the same way under similar situations? 2. Distinctiveness: does the person tend to act differently in other circumstances? 3. Consistency: does the person always do this when performing a task? High> external attribution Low< Internal attribution

Four steps of Behavioral Modeling

Behavioral modeling is when employees observe the actions of others, learn from what they observe, and then repeat the observed behavior. 1. Attentional process: learner focuses attention on the critical behaviors exhibited by the model, goes along with tacit knowledge 2. Retention process learner must remember the behaviors of the model once the model is no longer present 3. Production process: learner must have the appropriate skill set and be able to reproduce the behavior 4. Reinforcement: learner must view the model receiving reinforcement for the behavior, and then receive it themselves

bounded rationality

Bounded rationality is the notion that decision makers do not have the ability or resources to process all available information and alternatives to make an optimal decision. They have limited info and will satisfice

fundamental attribution error

Centers on how we explain actions/events that occur around us. When people view an event they determine if it was internally or externally caused, leads to fundamental attribution error. Bad outcome= more likely to judge others behaviors as internal, but out own as external.

Satisficing

Choosing an option that is acceptable, although not necessarily the best or perfect. Picking first acceptable alternative instead of evaluating all possibilities

According to operant conditioning, four specific consequences are used to modify behavior. What name is used to describe these consequences?

Contingences of reinforcement

nonprogrammed decisions

Decisions that are made in response to novel, poorly defined, or unstructured situations that require managers to use their best judgments. In uncertain situations, employees have to use rational decision making to guide appropriate outcomes, a step by step way to find an appropriate solution. Determine criteria for making decision ➡️ generate list of available alternatives➡️ evaluate the alternatives against criteria➡️ choose solution that maximizes value➡️ implement appropriate solution➡️ does solution deliver?

programmed decisions

Employees making decisions that are somewhat automatic responses. Peoples KSAs allow them to quickly identify the solution. Intuition or gut feeling. If the problem has been dealt with before, it will be a programmed decision

Decision making problems that prevent employees from making accurate decisions

Faulty perceptions, faulty attributions, limited information, escalation of commitment

How does learning impact decision making?

In decision making, we don't use as much of the available information as we think we do. More knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs)= more accurate decisions

Heuristics

Mental shortcuts or "rules of thumb" that often lead to a solution (but not always). Make decisions more easily.

Learning impact on job performance

Moderate positive effect- employees who gain more knowledge and skill tend to have higher levels of task performance.

Extinction

Not responding in any way (not taking or adding) results in behavior occuring less overtime.

Tacit knowledge

Only learned via experience. Not easily communicated, but likely one of the most important aspects of learning in organizations. 90% of knowledge in orgs is in tacit form. Intuition, skills, beliefs, mental models. Job or situation specific.

Nature of consequence- contingent withdrawal

Positive- Punishment (response cost) Outcome- behavior occurs less often Negative- negative reinforcement Outcome- behavior occurs more often Can TAKE AWAY something positive/negative to encourage/discourage future behavior

Nature of consequence- contingent presentation

Positive- positive reinforcement. Outcome- target behavior occurs more often Negative- punishment. Outcome- target behavior occurs less often Can ADD something positive/negative to encourage/ discourage behavior in the future.

When TeJay started his new job, he found the step-by-step process for logging into the company server set forth in a laminated document by computer. What type of information is represented by this document? Multiple choice question.

explicit

Chelsea's manager sent her an email asking to meet, for an unspecified reason, the following Friday. Upon reading this email, Chelsea remembered a situation six months prior when her manager sent such as email to another team member. During that meeting, the team member was laid off from the organization. Based on this recollection, Chelsea is extremely worried about the upcoming meeting with her boss. Which type of bias is being represented?

Representative bias

Variable interval reinforcement

Reward given at variable (random) time periods. Moderately high potential level of performance. Ex: supervisor walk by.

variable ratio reinforcement

Reward given following a variable number of desired behaviors, very high level of performance. Ex: commision pay. people know the reward is coming; it would be analogous to the class activities - they are random, you know they are going to come eventually for attending class repeatedly, and you know you'll get rewarded for doing them.

Mara has worked in her company's office for many years and over time has learned who the best people are to talk to when certain issues arise. What type of knowledge does this represent? Multiple choice question.

Tacit

Availability bias

Tendency for people to base their judgments on information that is easier to recall. but info that comes to mind is not always most accurate

Sunk cost fallacy

Tendency to continue supporting unsuccessful courses of action due to sunk costs being considered justification for continued or increased investment. Throwing good money after bad. Diverting resources from stable projects to try to save failing projects.

Expertise

Want employees with high levels of expertise- skills that distinguish them from people who are more novice. Differences between experts and novices is almost always a function of their learning (as opposed to intelligence or other innate differences)

Organizational evidence on decision making

We have limited info processing capabilities, and only consider a small set of alternatives. We have an implicit favorite and process facts in different ways. We evaluate alternatives sequentially and choose the one that is good enough.

operant conditioning

a type of learning in which behavior is strengthened if followed by a reinforcer or diminished if followed by a punisher. Antecedent- condition that precedes the behavior ➡️ Behavior- action performed➡️Consequence- result of that learning

commitment types

affective- emotional attachment normative- obligation Continuance- cant afford to leave

When applying for jobs, job seekers often focus on a desired salary while ignoring other aspects of the job offer such as benefits, fit with the job, and working environment. In many cases, the salary may be good, but there are other, negative features of the job not being considered. This is an example of

anchoring bias

social learning theory

argues that people in organizations have the ability to learn through the observation of others

New supervisors at Quality Engineering are required to attend a training program in which they learn how to do performance reviews for their subordinates. The employees watch the trainer conduct a performance review and then participate in role play in which they conduct mock performance reviews on each other. What name is given to this type of program?

behavior modeling of training

What term describes the idea that people are unable to reach the optimal decision due to a lack of ability, time, and resources to process information and alternatives?

bounded rationality

Learning oriented people

building competence is deemed more important than demonstrating competence. Enjoy new and novel tasks, even if they fail while trying. Gaining mastery outweighs the cost of failing for them. Associated with self confidence, feedback seeking behavior, and learning performance.

To capitalize on the expertise of its employees in developing new products, a multinational consumer electronics company established groups of engineers in its various divisions to share knowledge, design methodologies, and design successes and failures. What term describes this action? Multiple choice question.

communities of practice

Layla is a member of a local water conservation group. She is polling people to find out whether they would support a new clean water initiative. She asks people all over the community, but she decides some of the "no" votes are not valid because people didn't seem to understand the urgency of the issue. Layla appears to be suffering from

confirmation bias

Sheldon made the decision to purchase new business accounting software that is prone to malfunctioning. The software needs consistent troubleshooting by outside experts, and Sheldon's organization continues to pay for the frequent troubleshooting instead of changing to a new software platform. This is an example of which of the following biases?

escalation of commitment

Behaviors are reinforced after a certain number of them have been exhibited under a _________blank schedule of reinforcement.

fixed ratio Fixed ratio schedules reinforce behaviors after a certain number of them have been exhibited. Some manufacturing plants have created piece-rate pay systems in which workers are paid according to the number of items they produce.

performance-prove orientated people

focus on demonstrating their competence so that others think favorably of them, and get favorable evaluations. More likely to work on tasks they are already good at, associated with "mixed bag" outcomes

performance-avoid orientation

focus on demonstrating their competence so that others will NOT think negatively of them. Failure is only negative. Associated with lower levels of learning and higher anxiety.

The ________blank can provoke a different decision depending on how it is worded.

framing bias

Diana's company is facing a major disruption in the supply chain. She's been asked to decide how to address the issue to get the company's assembly line back on track. In applying rational decision-making, she starts by identifying criteria important for this decision. In the second step, she should..

generate a list of alternatives that are available

Feedback

in order to learn and improve you have to know how you are actually performing. There are errors in feedback appraisals, however: stereotyping, halo (giving an employee the same rating on all dimensions of the job even if performance is good on some dimensions and not good on others) effect, recency bias, above average bias (people tend to overestimate their relative performance), unskilled and unaware bias (least skilled people overestimate their competency, whereas highly skilled people underestimate their competency). Feedback can be sugarcoated, negative feedback can be given too late, it can be vague and inconsistent, and has relational issues

Emotionally charged judgments that arise through quick, nonconscious, and holistic associations are known as

intuition

Recency effects

just-heard items can be retrieved directly from working memory

Decision making

process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve problems. The biases we encounter in making decisions are the factors we must consider when forecasting the behavior of others. Modeling human behavior is extremely difficult.

Alicia has to order copier toner again, so she consults the online catalog of the company's office supply vendor to see if either of her preferred brands is on sale. What type of decision is this? Multiple choice question.

programmed

Sunk cost remedies

reduce myopia- think ahead and of future returns instead od past investment. Cut your losses. Make an exit rule ahead of time

Learning

reflects relatively permanent changes in an employee's knowledge or skill that result from experience

Methods of Learning

reinforcement, observation, goal orientation

fixed interval reinforcement

reward given after fixed time periods. Average potential level of performance. Ex: paycheck

Fixed ratio reinforcement

reward is given after a fixed number of desired behaviors. High level of performance. Ex: piece rate pay

What type of decision making are you engaged in when you are not looking for the very best alternative, but instead accept the first alternative that meets minimum requirements?

satisficing

selective perception

tendency for people to see their environment only as it affects them and as it is consistent with their expectations, "you only see what you want to see" Affects our ability to identify problems, generate and evaluate alternatives and judge outcomes

Goal orientation

the manner in which people are motivated to work toward different kinds of goals. People learn differently as a function of the goals/activities they prioritize.

self-serving bias

the tendency for people to take personal credit for success but blame failure on external factors.

Framing effects

the tendency to make different decisions depending on simple differences in how situations are presented/framed. Risky choice framing: the tendency to avoid risks when potential gains are emphasized and to take risks when potential losses are emphasized. Attributive framing: tendency to evaluate a characteristic more positively when it is presented in positive terms than in negative.

training and transfer of training

training is behavioral modeling using communities of practice. KSAs learned transfer to job, good climate for transfer is an environment that supports using newly learned KSAs

what occurs when the knowledge, skills, and behaviors used on the job are maintained by the learner once the period of learning ends and generalized to the workplace once the learner returns to the job.

transfer of training

Behavioral modeling

when employees observe the actions of others, learn from what they observe, and then repeat the observed behavior