Deck 12: Decision Making, Learning, Knowledge Management, and Information Technology

Question 1

The creation of an organization's strategy is an example of programmed decision-making.

Answer 1

False

Question 2

Generally, programmed decision-making is used by the organizations to find solutions to changing and uncertain conditions.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

The rational model of decision-making assumes that different managers use different preferences and values and will use different rules to decide on the best alternative.

Answer 3

False

Question 4

Satisficing involves a much more costly information search and puts far more of a burden on managers than does the rational model.

Question 5

According to Peter Senge, individual learning is more important than team learning in promoting organizational learning.

Question 6

The rational model of decision-making assumes that managers are aware of all alternative courses of action and their consequences.

Question 7

The incrementalist model of decision-making explains why and how managers make nonprogrammed decisions.

Question 8

The incrementalist model of decision-making, developed by Henry Mintzberg and his colleagues, describes how decision-making takes place when uncertainty is high.

Question 9

The design of a mechanistic structure facilitates explorative learning whereas the design of an organic structure facilitates exploitative learning.

Question 10

Adaptive cultures are cautious and conservative.

Question 11

Programmed decision-making allows an organization to increase its efficiency and reduce the costs of making goods and services.

Question 12

Nonprogrammed decision-making forces managers to rely on judgment, intuition, and creativity to solve organizational problems.

Question 13

The Carnegie model assumes that managers' ability is restricted by bounded rationality.

Question 14

Exploration is a more radical learning strategy than exploitation.

Question 15

Exploration involves organizational members learning ways to refine and improve existing organizational activities and procedures to increase effectiveness.

Question 16

The Carnegie model offers a more accurate description of how decision-making takes place in an organization than does the rational model.

Question 17

The rational model of decision-making ignores the ambiguity, uncertainty, and chaos that is typically involved in decision-making.

Question 18

Programmed decisions are creative, novel, and unstructured.

Question 19

Nonprogrammed decision-making requires much less search for information to find solutions than does programmed decision-making.

Question 20

Exploitation involves organizational members searching for and experimenting with new kinds or forms of organizational activities and procedures to increase effectiveness.

Question 21

According to Kotter and Heskett, organizational learning is higher in organizations with adaptive cultures than that in organizations with inert culture.

Question 22

Which of the following statements is true regarding nonprogrammed decision-making?

A) Nonprogrammed decision-making is performed with the help of standard operating procedures.
B) Nonprogrammed decision-making involves selecting the most effective-easy, repetitive, and routine-operating procedures to handle an organization's ongoing value-creation activities.
C) Nonprogrammed decision-making forces managers to rely on judgment, intuition, and creativity to solve organizational problems.
D) Nonprogrammed decision-making requires much less search for information to find solutions than does programmed decision-making.

Question 23

In a circle configuration of a top-management team, organizational learning is decreased because managers from the different functions report separately to the CEO.

Question 24

Which of the following terms refers to the process of responding to a problem by searching for and selecting a solution or course of action that will create the most value for organizational stakeholders?

A) organizational learning
B) organizational isomorphism
C) organizational decision-making
D) organizational development

Question 25

Top-management teams function most effectively when their membership is stable and there is not too much entry into or departure from the team.

Question 26

Cognitive dissonance is the state of discomfort or anxiety that a person feels when there is an inconsistency between his or her beliefs and actions.

Question 27

Escalation of commitment is a cognitive bias that leads managers to form judgments based on small and unrepresentative samples.

Question 28

Which of the following statements is true regarding programmed decision-making?

A) Programmed decision-making requires much more search for information to find solutions than does nonprogrammed decision-making.
B) Programmed decision-making forces managers to rely on judgment, intuition, and creativity to solve organizational problems.
C) Programmed decision-making is unstructured in nature and it is used by an organization to find solutions to changing and uncertain conditions.
D) Programmed decision-making allows an organization to increase its efficiency and reduce the costs of making goods and services.

Question 29

When an organization uses a personalization approach to knowledge management, information systems are designed to show employees who in the organization might possess the knowledge they might need or who might have confronted a similar problem in the past.

Question 30

A collateral organizational structure is an informal organization of managers set up parallel to the formal organizational structure to "shadow" the decision-making and actions of managers in the formal organization.

Question 31

Ego-defensiveness is a cognitive bias that leads managers to interpret events in such a way that their actions appear in the most favorable light.

Question 32

A wheel configuration of a top-management team solves complex problems much more quickly than a circle arrangement.

Question 33

A cognitive bias that causes managers to overestimate the extent to which the outcomes of an action are under their personal control is referred to as the "halo effect."

Question 34

Game theory is particularly useful in analyzing situations where a company is competing against a limited number of rivals in its domain and they are highly interdependent.

Question 35

Programmed decisions are ________.

A) creative
B) novel
C) unstructured
D) repetitive

Question 36

Inert cultures encourage risk taking by middle and lower-level managers.

Question 37

Nonprogrammed decisions are ________.

A) repetitive
B) unstructured
C) easy
D) routine

Question 38

As compared to organizations with mechanistic and inert cultures, organizations with organic and adaptive cultures are more likely to actively seek out new ways to manage linkages with other organizations.

Question 39

Typically, a codification approach to knowledge management is pursued when an organization needs to provide customized products or solutions to clients, when technology is changing rapidly, and when employees rely much more on know-how, insight, and judgment to make decisions.

Question 40

Projection is a cognitive bias that deceives people into assuming that extreme instances of a phenomenon are more prevalent than they really are.

Question 41

Which of the following decision-making models explains why and how managers can improve their programmed decision-making over time?

A) Carnegie model
B) rational model
C) unstructured model
D) incrementalist model

Question 42

Which of the following are the two principal types of organizational learning strategies proposed by James March?

A) incremental and radical
B) structured and unstructured
C) exploration and exploitation
D) association and differentiation

Question 43

When an organization is using the ________ model of decision-making, it becomes an "organized anarchy" in which the decision about which alternative to select depends on which manager or coalition has the most influence or power to sway other decision makers at that moment.

A) incrementalist
B) Carnegie
C) garbage-can
D) rational

Question 44

Which of the following is an example of organizational learning that involves exploration?

A) a supplier implements a TQM program
B) a steel mill refines its production processes
C) an automobile manufacturer enters into a strategic alliance
D) a software services company modifies its existing leave policy

Question 45

Which of the following models of organizational decision-making, developed by Henry Mintzberg and his colleagues explains why and how managers make nonprogrammed decisions?

A) rational model
B) incrementalist model
C) Carnegie model
D) unstructured model

Question 46

Which of the following organizational learning strategies, proposed by James March, involves organizational members learning ways to refine and improve existing organizational activities and procedures to increase effectiveness?

A) exploration
B) association
C) exploitation
D) reciprocation

Question 47

The rational model of decision-making assumes that ________.

A) managers do not have access to all the information necessary to make the best decision
B) managers have only a limited ability to process the information required to make decisions
C) different managers have different preferences and values and will use different rules to decide on the best alternative
D) managers are aware of all alternative courses of action and their consequences

Question 48

Which of the following statements is true regarding the incrementalist model?

A) According to this model decision-making is a process that may evolve unpredictably in an unstructured way and it forces decision makers to think in a haphazard and intuitive way.
B) This model works best in an environment that changes suddenly or abruptly.
C) This model implies that managers rarely make major decisions that are radically different from decisions they have made before.
D) According to this model, decision makers weigh every possible alternative course of action and choose the best solution.

Question 49

Which of the following is an assumption of the Carnegie model of decision-making?

A) All the information required for decision-making is available.
B) decision-making is affected by the preferences and values of decision makers.
C) Before making a decision, managers generate the full range of possible alternatives.
D) Solution is chosen by unanimous agreement among all the stakeholders.

Question 50

Satisficing occurs when decision makers ________.

A) evaluate all the possible courses of action and their consequences and select the optimal solution
B) try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus without critical evaluation of alternative ideas or viewpoints
C) view two options as more dissimilar when evaluating them simultaneously than when evaluating them separately
D) conduct limited information searches to identify problems and alternative solutions

Question 51

According to the ________ model of organizational decision-making, when selecting a set of new alternative courses of action, managers tend to choose those that are only slightly different from those used in the past, thus lessening their chances of making a mistake.

A) rational
B) incrementalist
C) Carnegie
D) garbage-can

Question 52

The garbage-can approach to organizational decision-making is clearly the opposite of the approach described by the ________ model.

A) rational
B) unstructured
C) Carnegie
D) incremental

Question 53

Which of the following statements is true regarding the Carnegie model?

A) The Carnegie model ignores the variation in managers' preferences and values and assumes different managers will evaluate different alternatives in the same way.
B) The Carnegie model offers a less accurate description of how decision-making takes place in an organization than does the rational model.
C) The Carnegie model recognizes that decision-making takes place in an uncertain environment where information is often incomplete and ambiguous.
D) The Carnegie model assumes that managers generate the full range of possible alternatives before making decisions.

Question 54

Which of the following organizations is most likely to use the incrementalist model for decision-making?

A) a biotechnology company that operates in a dynamic environment
B) a dominant manufacturer of printing papers that operates in a stable environment
C) a software services company that operates in a very competitive environment
D) a pharmaceutical company that operates in a complex and highly uncertain environment because it has many groups of stakeholders

Question 55

Senge has argued that for organizational learning to occur, each of its members needs to develop a sense of personal mastery, by which he means that organizations should ________.

A) use centralized decision-making and ensure that only the top-management team has the decision-making authority
B) increase the extent of division of labor so that all employees become efficient at the tasks allocated to them
C) encourage managers to set ambitious goals for their subordinates
D) empower all employees and allow them to experiment and create and explore what they want

Question 56

The term "________" refers to a limited capacity to process information.

A) bounded rationality
B) planning fallacy
C) hindsight bias
D) cryptomnesia

Question 57

Which of the following statements is true regarding the unstructured model of decision-making?

A) The unstructured model recognizes that decision-making takes place in a series of small, incremental steps that collectively have a major effect on organizational effectiveness over time.
B) In an environment that changes suddenly or abruptly, the unstructured model prevents managers from changing quickly enough to meet new conditions.
C) The unstructured model explains why and how managers can improve their programmed decision-making over time.
D) According to the unstructured model, decision-making is a linear, sequential process.

Question 58

The design of a(n) ________ structure facilitates exploitative learning.

A) organic
B) product team
C) mechanistic
D) matrix

Question 59

Which of the following organizational learning strategies, proposed by James March, involves organizational members searching for and experimenting with new kinds or forms of organizational activities and procedures to increase effectiveness?

A) exploration
B) exploitation
C) reciprocation
D) association

Question 60

The ________ model of decision-making turns the decision-making process around and argues that managers are as likely to start decision-making from the "solution side" as from the "problem side." In other words, decision makers may propose solutions to problems that do not exist; they create a problem they can solve with solutions that are already available.

A) Carnegie
B) rational
C) incrementalist
D) garbage-can

Question 61

By developing a knowledge management system, managers want to provide employees with a step by step procedure on how to solve problems. They want to do this because most of their problems are recurring events, and standard procedures work well. This information indicates that the organization is planning to implement a ________ approach to knowledge management.

A) systems thinking
B) codification
C) personalization
D) learning organization

Question 62

By developing a knowledge management system, managers want to provide employees more with information on "who to go to" to solve a specific problem rather than describing the steps to solve a problem. They want to do this because most of their problems are too complex to rely on standard procedures. This information indicates that the organization is planning to implement a ________ approach to knowledge management.

A) systems thinking
B) codification
C) personalization
D) learning organization

Question 63

An organization is most likely to pursue a personalization approach to knowledge management when ________.

A) the different functions in the organization provide standardized information which can be used by other functions for mutual adjustment
B) the organization wants to collect, analyze, and store knowledge in databases where it can be retrieved easily by users who input organization-specific commands and keywords.
C) the organization operates in a rapidly changing technical environment and provides customized products and solutions to clients
D) the organization wants to implement standard rules and operating procedures

Question 64

A manager catches an employee coming in late for work, and therefore decides that a new company-wide policy regarding work timings should be implemented in order to improve productivity. Which of the following cognitive biases is being experienced by this manager?

A) groupthink
B) illusion of Control
C) frequency
D) ego-defensiveness

Question 65

A ________ structure is the system of interrelated beliefs, preferences, expectations, and values that a person uses to define problems and events.

A) cognitive
B) affective
C) normative
D) mimetic

Question 66

A top-level manager in an organization thinks that he is the only person in the organization who can oversee global expansion. Which of the following cognitive biases is being experienced by this manager?

A) cognitive dissonance
B) representativeness
C) ego-defensiveness
D) illusion of control

Question 67

When an information system is designed according to a ________ approach to knowledge management, it shows employees who in the organization might possess the knowledge they might need or who might have confronted a similar problem in the past.

A) personalization
B) cognitive
C) codification
D) systems thinking

Question 68

________ is a cognitive bias that deceives people into assuming that extreme instances of a phenomenon are more prevalent than they really are.

A) Frequency
B) Illusion of control
C) Ego-defensiveness
D) Cognitive dissonance

Question 69

When an organization uses a ________ approach to knowledge management, it ensures that knowledge is carefully collected, analyzed, and stored in databases where it can be retrieved easily by users who input organization-specific commands and keywords.

A) cognitive
B) personalization
C) codification
D) systems thinking

Question 70

According to the principle of systems thinking, to create a learning organization, ________.

A) decision-making should be centralized
B) managers must recognize the effects of one level of learning on the others
C) span of control should be narrow
D) middle and lower-level managers should be discouraged from risk taking

Question 71

According to cognitive dissonance theory, decision makers ________.

A) try to maintain consistency between their images of themselves, their attitudes, and their decisions
B) give preferential treatment to others they perceive to be members of their own groups
C) tend to create models based on past data which are validated only against that past data
D) overestimate others' ability to know them, and they also overestimate their ability to know others

Question 72

Which of the following statements is most likely to be true regarding an inert culture?

A) According to Kotter and Heskett, organizational learning is higher in organizations with inert cultures than that in organizations with adaptive culture.
B) Inert cultures encourage and reward experimentation and risk taking by middle and lower-level managers.
C) Organizations with inert cultures are less likely to survive in a changing environment than organizations with adaptive cultures.
D) An inert culture is typically found in an organization with organic structure.

Question 73

According to Kotter and Heskett, ________ cultures are those that value innovation and encourage and reward experimenting and risk taking by middle and lower-level managers.

A) associative
B) inert
C) mechanistic
D) adaptive

Question 74

An organization is most likely to pursue a codification approach to knowledge management when ________.

A) the organization needs to provide customized products or solutions to clients
B) the organization operates in a rapidly changing technical environment
C) employees are required to rely much more on know-how, insight, and judgment to make decisions
D) the organization wants to collect best practices and SOPs that can be drawn on by anyone who needs them

Question 75

Which of the following terms refers to the state of discomfort or anxiety that a person feels when there is an inconsistency between his or her beliefs and actions?

A) illusion of transparency
B) self-concordance
C) cognitive dissonance
D) illusion of control

Question 76

Which of the following statements is true regarding an adaptive culture?

A) An adaptive culture is cautious and conservative.
B) Organizations with adaptive cultures are less likely to survive in a changing environment than organizations with inert cultures.
C) According to Kotter and Heskett, organizational learning is higher in organizations with adaptive cultures than that in organizations with inert culture.
D) An adaptive culture discourages lower and middle level managers from taking risks.

Question 77

When managers have an illusion of control bias, they often ________.

A) centralize decision-making authority
B) promote flat hierarchy of authority
C) empower workers
D) promote mutual adjustment

Question 78

According to Kotter and Heskett, ________ cultures are cultures that are cautious and conservative and do not encourage risk taking by middle and lower-level managers.

A) innovative
B) inert
C) conservative
D) adaptive

Question 79

A manager at an automobile plant had two suppliers that delivered defective parts. She now thinks that all suppliers are unreliable. Which of the following cognitive biases is being experienced by this manager?

A) escalation of commitment
B) projection
C) representativeness
D) illusion of control

Question 80

________ is a cognitive bias that leads managers to form judgments based on small and unrepresentative samples.

A) Cognitive dissonance
B) Ego-defensiveness
C) Representativeness
D) Illusion of control