Deck 7: Decision Making and Creativity

Question 1

Nonprogrammed decisions require all steps in the decision model because the problems they present are new, complex, or ill-defined.

Answer 1

True
Explanation: Nonprogrammed decisions require all steps in the decision model because the problems are new, complex, or ill-defined.

Question 2

The rational choice paradigm assumes that obtaining all possible information about all possible alternatives and their outcomes when selecting the choice with the highest SEU is a complex and time-consuming procedure.

Answer 2

False
Explanation: The fourth step is to select the choice with the highest subjective expected utility.This calls for all possible information about all possible alternatives and their outcomes, but the rational choice paradigm assumes this can be accomplished with ease.

Question 3

Subjective expected utility refers to how much the selected alternative benefits or satisfies the decision maker.

Answer 3

True
Explanation: Subjective expected utility is the probability (expectation) of satisfaction (utility) for each alternative.

Question 4

One of the reasons people use satisficing rather than maximization when making decisions is that they lack the capacity and motivation to process the huge volume of information required to identify the best choice.

Question 5

The first step in the rational choice paradigm is to identify the problem or recognize an opportunity.

Question 6

The rational choice paradigm assumes that decision makers have limited information-processing capabilities and engage in a limited search for alternatives.

Question 7

The last step in the rational decision-making model is to evaluate the decision outcomes.

Question 8

Although the implicit favorite comparison process seems to be hardwired in human decision making, it often undermines effective decision making.

Question 9

According to bounded rationality theory, people make the best decisions when their perceptions are "bounded" or framed by past experience.

Question 10

One reason why the problem identification stage is imperfect is that various stakeholders try to frame the decision maker's view of the situation.

Question 11

Decision making is a nonconscious process of moving toward a desirable state of affairs.

Question 12

The clustering illusion is the tendency to see patterns from a small sample of events when those events are, in fact, random.

Question 13

The rational choice decision paradigm recommends choosing the alternative with a moderate subjective expected utility.

Question 14

Decision makers typically look at alternatives sequentially and compare each alternative with an implicit favorite.

Question 15

The decision-making process is more effective when problems are defined in terms of their solutions.

Question 16

Preconceived mental models formed by our cognitive structure help us make better and accurate decisions.

Question 17

The rational choice paradigm selects the choice with the highest utility through the calculation of objective expected utility.

Question 18

The representativeness heuristic is a natural tendency to assign higher probabilities to objects or events that are easier to recall from memory.

Question 19

The rational choice paradigm has dominated decision making philosophy in Western societies for most of written history.

Question 20

Decision makers have a need to reduce uncertainty, so they tend to engage in solution-focused problem identification.

Question 21

Divergent thinking refers to calculating the conventionally accepted "right answer" to a logical problem.

Question 22

Research suggests that decision makers do not evaluate several alternatives when they find an opportunity.

Question 23

Intuition operates independently of the programmed decision routines that speed up our response to pattern matches or mismatches.

Question 24

The prospect theory effect motivates us to avoid losses.

Question 25

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

Question 26

Intuition allows us to draw on our tacit knowledge to guide our decision preferences.

Question 27

The ideas that appear during the illumination stage of creativity are quickly forgotten unless documented.

Question 28

Escalation of commitment is likely to occur when the perceived costs of terminating the project are high or unknown.

Question 29

Escalation of commitment occurs when employees increase their support for a decision because most of their colleagues also support that decision.

Question 30

Scenario planning is a systematic process of thinking about alternative futures and what the organization should do to anticipate and react to those environments.

Question 31

The four main influences of escalation of commitment are self-justification effect, self-enhancement effect, prospect theory effect, and sunk costs effect.

Question 32

Involving several people in the evaluation of a decision weakens the decision evaluation process.

Question 33

Incubation is the stage of creativity in which the problem is simmering at the back of your mind while you are doing something else.

Question 34

Intuition is based on mental templates or models representing tacit knowledge about a situation.

Question 35

Creativity is defined as reframing a problem in a unique way and generating different approaches to the issue.

Question 36

The incubation stage of creativity is more effective when the decision maker sets aside all other activities and focuses attention on the issue or problem.

Question 37

Post-decisional justification gives people an excessively optimistic evaluation of their decisions, until they receive very clear and undeniable information to the contrary.

Question 38

When in a positive mood, people pay more attention to details and follow a nonprogrammed decision routine.

Question 39

When making important decisions, we "listen in" on our emotions to guide our preference among the decision alternatives.

Question 40

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

Question 41

A low level of employee involvement occurs when employees are individual asked for specific information but the problem is not described to them.

Question 42

Creativity tends to suffer during times of downsizing and corporate restructuring.

Question 43

In organizational settings, creativity usually occurs alone rather than with other people.

Question 44

Morphological analysis is a test used to identify people with a creative personality.

Question 45

Creative ideas can emerge when asking people unfamiliar with the problem to explore the problem with you.

Question 46

Employee involvement tends to weaken the decision-making process.

Question 47

Employees are more committed to implementing a solution when they are involved in making the decision.

Question 48

High employee involvement would be difficult to achieve when conflict is likely among employees.

Question 49

Employee involvement potentially improves both the decision-making quality and the commitment of employees.

Question 50

The ideas that form during the illumination stage of creativity need to be verified through logical evaluation and experimentation.

Question 51

People are most creative when management puts intense time pressures on them to complete tasks.

Question 52

Creative people tend to have a high need for affiliation.

Question 53

Creative people need have practical intelligence but not cognitive intelligence.

Question 54

_____ is a conscious process of making choices among one or more alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs.

A)Decision making
B)Bounded rationality
C)Divergent thinking
D)Prospect theory
E)Scenario planning

Question 55

Knowledge and experience can undermine creativity because they can lead to routinization of that knowledge.

Question 56

Cross-pollination is recommended to encourage creativity in organizations.

Question 57

Creative people are more embarrassed when they make mistakes.

Question 58

Task significance and autonomy are important conditions for creativity in organizations.

Question 59

The four outcomes of employee involvement are decision structure, source of decision knowledge, decision commitment, and risk of conflict.

Question 60

A potentially useful creative practice is to list different dimensions of a system and the elements of each dimension, then think through the potential commercial usefulness of each combination.

Question 61

Which of the following is one of the assumptions of the rational choice paradigm?

A)Decision makers evaluate alternatives against an implicit favorite.
B)Decision makers choose the alternative that is good enough.
C)Decision makers have well-articulated goals.
D)Decision makers evaluate alternatives sequentially.
E)Decision makers process perceptually distorted information.

Question 62

Which of these is the final step in the rational choice decision making process?

A)Developing a list of solutions
B)Implementing the selected alternative
C)Choosing the best alternative
D)Evaluating decision outcomes
E)Recognizing the opportunities

Question 63

Which of the following is an observation from organizational behavior that contradicts the rational choice paradigm assumptions?

A)Decision makers evaluate all alternatives simultaneously.
B)Decision makers use factual information to choose alternatives.
C)Decision makers choose the alternative with the highest payoff.
D)Decision makers have limited information processing abilities.
E)Decision makers use absolute standards to evaluate alternatives.

Question 64

What effect do mental models have on the decision-making process?

A)They perpetuate assumptions that make it difficult to see new opportunities.
B)They allow decision makers to obtain accurate information from the surroundings.
C)They reduce the importance of developing alternative solutions to the problem.
D)They allow decision makers to maximize the potential of their decision making.
E)They help people to be more creative in decision making.

Question 65

A nonprogrammed decision is applicable in any:

A)routine situation where the company has a ready-made solution.
B)decision that does not relate directly to the employee's job description.
C)nonroutine situation in which employees must search for alternative solutions.
D)decision that is clearly within the employee's job description.
E)decision that affects the employee's performance.

Question 66

One school of management thought states that organizational decisions and actions are influenced mainly by what attracts management's attention, rather than by the objective reality of the external or internal environment.Which of the following practices is closely associated with this argument?

A)Rational choice paradigm
B)Programmed decision making
C)Perceptual defense
D)Decisive leadership
E)Stakeholder framing

Question 67

Decision makers tend to rely on their implicit favorite when they:

A)select an appropriate decision style.
B)evaluate decision alternatives sequentially.
C)want to avoid escalation of commitment.
D)want to make more creative decisions.
E)have to make a selection from very limited alternatives.

Question 68

Perceptual defense causes us to:

A)defend the solutions we propose.
B)defend those who agree with us when we identify a problem.
C)defend the perception we have after making a decision.
D)block out bad news or information that threatens our self-concept.
E)justify our actions to defend our position.

Question 69

Satisficing refers to:

A)the tendency to choose an alternative that is good enough rather than the best.
B)the feeling employees experience when they are not involved in a decision in which they would have made a valuable contribution.
C)a desirable outcome of decision making when several employees participate in the decision process.
D)the feeling employees experience when they make the right decision.
E)the tendency for decision makers to evaluate alternatives sequentially rather than comparing them all at once.

Question 70

During a meeting, senior executives of a consumer products company were addressing the problem of being late in detecting several consumer trends, such as the trend toward 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?

A)The executive is engaging in escalation of commitment.
B)The executive is being too creative.
C)The executive is involved in participative decision making.
D)The executive is engaging in groupthink.
E)The executive is defining the problem in terms of a solution.

Question 71

The availability heuristic refers to the tendency:

A)to choose an alternative that is good enough rather than the best.
B)for people to influence an initial anchor point.
C)to evaluate probabilities of events or objects by how closely it resembles another event.
D)to estimate the probability of something occurring by how easily we can recall those events.
E)for decision makers to evaluate alternatives sequentially rather than comparing them all at once.

Question 72

Which of the following is NOT a reason people engage in satisficing rather than maximization?

A)They lack the capacity and motivation to process a huge volume of information.
B)They rely on sequential evaluation of new alternatives.
C)Decisions with many alternatives can be cognitively and emotionally draining.
D)Alternatives present themselves over time, not all at once.
E)It allows them to choose the alternative with the highest payoff.

Question 73

The concept of bounded rationality holds that:

A)our perception of a rational reality is bounded by nonrationality.
B)decision makers process limited and imperfect information and therefore rarely select the best choice.
C)decision makers have limited alternatives to make decisions.
D)decision makers are bound to project images of themselves as rational thinkers.
E)our realities are bounded by our own perceptions so that everyone's reality is different.

Question 74

The rational choice paradigm selects the choice with the highest utility through the calculation of:

A)subjective expected utility.
B)selective expected utility.
C)solution-focused utility.
D)rational expected utility.
E)rational selective utility.

Question 75

The purely rational model of decision making is rarely practiced in reality because it:

A)ignores the fact that problems must be defined before alternatives are chosen.
B)assumes that human beings make decisions based on their emotions and abilities.
C)assumes that people are perfectly rational in their decision making.
D)ignores the fact that people evaluate their decision after an alternative has been chosen and implemented.
E)does not consider the problems associated with implementing each of the alternatives.

Question 76

Which of the following ultimately energize us to select the preferred choice?

A)Logic
B)Emotions
C)Rational logic
D)Creativity
E)Intuition

Question 77

The rational decision making model begins with:

A)evaluating alternatives.
B)identifying an opportunity.
C)searching for alternatives.
D)implementing the solution.
E)searching for information about outcomes to each alternative.

Question 78

The Director of Nursing is looking throughout the hospital for a new format of a work schedule for nurses.She evaluates each schedule system as soon as she learns about it.Eventually, she finds a schedule that is "good enough" for her needs and ends her search even though there may be better schedules available that she hasn't yet learned about.The Director of Nursing is engaging in:

A)escalation of commitment.
B)satisficing.
C)perceptual defense.
D)post-decisional justification.
E)open rationalization.

Question 79

The view that people should and typically do use logic and all available information to choose the alternative with the highest value is known as:

A)subjective expected utility maximization.
B)the rational choice paradigm.
C)bounded rationality.
D)decision making.
E)intuition.

Question 80

The tendency to define problems in terms of a preferred solution occurs because:

A)it provides a comforting solution.
B)decision makers prefer ambiguity rather than decisiveness.
C)it avoids the escalation of commitment problem.
D)it avoids problems of bounded rationality.
E)it helps in minimizing the biases caused by mental models.