Exam 15: Decision Making and Organizational Learning

The ________ reflects the tendency for people to make decisions based on adjustments from some initial amount.

The concept of ________ in decision-making groups embodies the idea that the whole is much more than the sum of its parts.

The illusion of invulnerability occurs when group members mistakenly believe that they are in total agreement when making decisions.

A performance program allows organizational members to be creative when faced with unusual situations.

The nominal group technique works best for complex decisions that require large amounts of information processing and repeated group meetings.

A devil's advocate should NOT raise problems when decisions are made unless he believes that he is making valid points.

The diversity of people participating in group decision making is NOT an advantage to this kind of decision making.

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a company-wide intranet that allows an organization to link and coordinate functional activities and operations.

A man has spent all day gambling on the slot machines. He has lost $250. If an escalation of commitment occurs, he will MOST LIKELY ________

March and Simon assert that decision makers approach decisions on the basis of their own subjective definitions of the situation, and they usually ________ rather than ________.

When the Delphi technique is used, group members do NOT meet face to face.

List the steps in the classical decision-making model and the two assumptions of the model. Are these assumptions realistic in an organizational context?

When universities develop policies dictating how to deal with students who cannot complete their courses, they are using a performance program to make a programmed decision.

________ occurs when the group as a whole rather than any one individual is accountable for the decision.

A decision to extend a store's operating hours is MOST LIKELY to be accepted by the store employees ________.

A group is trying to decide how to spend government aid. The group asks outside experts to come in and give their opinion. The manager decides that she thinks the first expert had great points and she lets all group members know that she supports that option. Everyone agrees with her, but she has a sinking suspicion that this is only because she will soon be determining who is getting bonuses. She is worried that there might be flaws with the chosen option. In the future, she could BEST avoid the possibility of groupthink by ________.

In order to help each employee to develop a ________, organizations should empower individuals to experiment, create, and explore what they want.

A family took a summer vacation in Florida. Unfortunately for them it was unseasonably chilly and they had not brought any blankets or warm clothing. If a representativeness heuristic was used, the family would be MOST LIKELY to ________.

How does a typical brainstorming session proceed?

A learning organization takes purposeful steps to enhance and maximize the potential for explorative and exploitative organizational learning to take place.