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Contemporary Organizational Behavior (Elsbach)
Topic Summary 8 Decision Making
1) Which type of decision do you make most frequently during a typical day?
A) Naturalistic
B) Rational
C) Programmed
2) Which of the following is a non-programmed decision?
A) Deciding who to hire
B) Determining budgets
C) Dealing with changing customer demands
D) Production demands
3) How does mental accounting distort our perceptions?
A) Downplay loss
B) Emphasize gain
C) Both of the above
Difficulty: Medium
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4) Where might incorrect information impact the decision making process?
A) Problem identification
B) Solution evaluation
C) Plan implementation
D) All of the above
5) Why do time constraints cause errors in decision making?
A) Your performance is being judged, placing far more pressure on you to quickly solve the
problem successfully
B) Effective managers can quickly assess the situation and make a decision. Taking more time
provides the impression that you aren’t a good manager
C) Time constraints limit your ability to gather information
6) Which of the following is not a heuristic used to shortcut the rational decision making
process?
A) You are overconfident that your opinion will be correct
B) You act with the information that you have instead of taking the time to collect better
information
C) You are focused on resolving only the one factor in the problem you deem to be the most
important
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7) When you begin your new job, you are soaking in all types of information about your new
work environment: some good, some bad. Mentally, you emphasize the number and importance
of the good aspects and discount those of the bad as you go through your first week. What are
you doing?
A) Managing your impression that you like the job
B) Maintaining a healthy outlook
C) Confirming to yourself that you made the right decision
D) Gathering information about the organization’s culture
8) What is the hindsight bias?
A) Changing viewpoints based on new information but not admitting the change
B) Changing viewpoints based on new information
C) The ability to objectively assess what they should or would have done after the fact (also
known as Monday morning quarterbacking)
D) Only occurs in situations that end in less than optimal outcomes
9) What is the behavioral economics approach?
A) The approach that represents behavior demonstrated when people decide economic problems
B) The approach that investigates why people predictably make irrational decisions
C) The approach that was named after the Nobel prize winning economic developers
D) The approach that measures behaviors economically and attempts to account for the way
people actually make decisions
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10) Which type of decision making incorporates mental tricks known as mental accounting
people use to help make financial and business decisions?
A) Probability accounting
B) Behavioral economics
C) Organizational psychology
11) Problem solving is meant to improve a situation, but errors can thwart success and possibly
make it worse. Identify five errors, describe their impact and what you can do to avoid them.
12) Sensemaking differs from rational decision making because ________.
A) Sensemaking examines past experiences to make decisions
B) Sensemaking justifies your reason for action before you do it
C) Sensemaking provides meaning to your action after you have taken it
D) Sensemaking doesn’t have identifiable steps
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13) How is prototyping helpful for making decisions?
A) By looking for context and that can more fully inform your decision making
B) By going with what your mind automatically jumped to, prototypes speed up decision making
C) By categorizing the situation you can draw on similar experiences in the past to more
accurately predict the consequences of your decision choices
D) All of the above
14) What is a common element found in both bounded rationality and satisficing?
A) Time pressure for decision
B) You are forced to act without all information
C) Subjectivity and not objectivity is used in both
D) They should be considered last resorts of problem solving
15) Which decision making approach incorporates emotions, politics, practical considerations,
and the systematic weighing of options?
A) Rational decision making
B) Naturalistic decision making
C) Organizational psychology-based decision making
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16) How would the garbage can model describe organizational decision making?
A) Heavily influenced by trivial matters and chance
B) It improves as the quality of the problems and solutions improve
C) It is modeled after untrained decision makers
17) You have to make a decision quickly and as best you can. What model best describes your
process?
A) Naturalistic
B) Rational
C) Behavioral economics
D) Garbage can
18) Understanding that decisions don’t always work is evidenced by the ________ failure rate of
decisions.
A) 20%
B) 35%
C) 40%
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19) How can consequences improve your decision making?
A) Reflect on negative consequences so you don’t repeat your mistakes
B) Glean as much learning as you can from other people’s consequences so you don’t have to be
the one who learns the hard way
C) Focus on how you can prevent failure to identify and address areas that could lead to these
negative consequences
D) Reflect on the negative consequences to remember what could be at stake and keep you
20) Which improvement has been suggested when addressing complex problems in naturalistic
decision making?
A) Base your decision on factors you feel are most important
B) Focus on the context of the problem
C) Utilize others as a sounding board for your ideas
21) What is meant by recommending that decision makers should focus on resilience?
A) Emotionally rebounding from poor decisions quickly
B) Learning from your mistakes so you don’t make them again
C) Identify areas that may be problematic as you apply your solution and develop plans to
address each before you begin
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22) Which model uses one’s emotions, intuition, and past experiences when deciding the best
course of action?
A) Rational
B) Naturalistic
C) Organizational psychology
D) Behavioral economics
23) Which decision making approach should you use if you need to make a decision using last
quarter’s sales data?
A) Behavioral economics
B) Organizational psychology
C) Rational model
D) All of the above
24) As HR manager, you have received e-mails from nearly every member of a team asking for
transfers off the team or demanding one (or more) teammates be terminated. You weren’t aware
of any issue with this team before, and you don’t have a clear idea of what’s going on, but this is
clearly an issue you have to address. What type of decision making should you use?
A) Behavioral economic-based decision making
B) Rational decision making
C) Naturalistic decision making
D) Organizational psychology-based decision making
Difficulty: Hard
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25) The last recommendation for improving naturalistic decision making is “decision makers
should put less emphasis on organizational decision making structures and more emphasis on
training decision makers who have expertise to look at a situation in its entirety.” What should
organizations do to implement this suggestion?