Exam 7: Decision Making and Creativity

During a meeting,senior executives of a consumer products company tackled the problem that they were late in detecting several consumer trends,such as the trend towards using see-through plastics in kitchenware.While trying to determine the source of this problem,one executive said: "The main problem here is that we need to find a better industrial design firm to design our products." Which of the following best describes the decision-making problem that this executive is exhibiting?

Post-decisional justification causes decision makers to forget what decision they made.

Senior management at Candoo Graphics has numerous administrative and client problems.In the past,the company assigned one person (typically a senior executive or department manager)to solve each problem alone.Although no one was prevented from discussing these issues with colleagues,the macho style of most managers was that they could overcome the challenging assignment without anyone's help.The results were usually adequate,but rarely exceptional.A few were disastrous.Senior management is now considering involving employees in these decisions,but it isn't sure how employee involvement makes a difference.Explain to Candoo's managers how employee involvement potentially results in more effective decisions.

Art classes and improvisational theatre are two creative activities of associative play.

Creative people tend to have a high need for social approval.

Employee involvement potentially improves decision-making quality and commitment.

Decision makers typically look at alternatives sequentially and compare each alternative to an implicit favourite.

Creativity occurs by redefining the problem,not just by finding a unique solution to the existing problem.

Need for stimulation,the ability to synthesize ideas,and low need for social approval are characteristics of:

Which of the following occurs during the incubation stage of the creative process?

A consumer products company wants more creativity in its research and development operations.The company has spent lots of money on creativity training sessions.These have helped somewhat,but the vice-president of this area believes that the fundamental conditions must be altered to allow more creativity.Describe three conditions (other than training)that this organization should establish to increase the level of creativity in its research and development operations.For each condition,briefly explain how it might improve creativity.

Comment on the accuracy of the following statement: 'Creativity increases with the individual's years of experience in that field of activity.'

A large financial institution is losing market share to savvy upstart companies,and it has asked its top marketing executive to identify the main reasons for the sliding fortunes.Describe three barriers that might cause the marketing executive to poorly identify the problem(s).An illustrative example in this context should be included for each barrier.

Representativeness heuristics is a natural tendency to pay less attention to whether something resembles something else than on more precise statistics about its probability.

The emerging emotional view of decision making states that people form preferences toward alternatives as soon as they receive information about those alternatives.

Ensuring that the person who makes the decision is different from the person who evaluates that decision is recommended mainly to:

The rational choice paradigm of decision making does NOT assume that:

Clustering illusion causes us to see patterns from a small sample of events,when in fact those events are random.

Which of these statements about creativity is TRUE?

When should decision makers bypass the search for alternative solutions and development of new solutions?