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a. An emphasis on rights in decision making means respecting and
protecting the basic rights of individuals, such as the right to privacy, free
speech, and due process.
b. Focus on justice—requires individuals to impose and enforce rules fairly
and impartially.
i. This criterion protects whistle-blowers when they reveal an
organization’s unethical practices to the press or government agencies,
using their right to free speech.
2. A third criterion is to impose and enforce rules fairly and impartially to ensure
justice or an equitable distribution of benefits and costs.
a. Public concern about individual rights and social justice suggests
managers should develop ethical standards based on non-utilitarian
criteria.
b. This presents a challenge because satisfying individual rights and social
justice creates far more ambiguities than utilitarian effects on efficiency
and profits.
c. However, while raising prices, selling products with questionable effects
on consumer health, closing down inefficient plants, laying off large
numbers of employees, and moving production overseas to cut costs can
be justified in utilitarian terms, that may no longer be the single measure
by which good decisions are judged.
3. Increasingly, researchers are turning to behavioral ethics—an area of study
that analyzes how people actually behave when confronted with ethical
dilemmas.
a. Their research tells us that while ethical standards exist collectively
(society and organizations) and individually (personal ethics), individuals
do not always follow ethical standards promulgated by their organizations,
and we sometimes violate our own standards.
4. How might we increase ethical decision making in organizations?
a. First, sociologist James Q. Wilson promulgated the broken windows
theory—the idea that decayed and disorderly urban environments may
facilitate criminal behavior because they signal antisocial norms.
b. Second, managers should encourage conversations about moral issues;
they may serve as a reminder and increase ethical decision making.
c. Finally, we should be aware of our own moral “blind spots”—the tendency
to see ourselves as more moral than we are, and others as less moral than
they are.
5. Behavioral ethics research stresses the importance of culture to ethical
decision making.
a. There are few global ethical standards, as contrasts between Asia and the
West illustrate.
b. What is ethical in one culture may be unethical in another.
c. Without sensitivity to cultural differences in defining ethical conduct,
organizations may encourage unethical conduct without even knowing it.
6. Lying
a. Lying is one of the top unethical activities we may indulge in daily, and it
undermines all efforts toward sound decision making.
b. Lying is deadly to decision making, whether we sense the lies or not.
i. Managers—and organizations—simply cannot make good decisions
when facts are misrepresented and people give false motives for their
behaviors.
c. Lying is a big ethical problem as well.
II. Creativity, Creative Decision Making, and Innovation in Organizations
A. Introduction
1. Definition: Creativity is the ability to produce novel and useful ideas. These
are ideas that are different from what has been done before, but that are also
appropriate to the problem.
2. The three-stage model of creativity shown in Exhibit 6-5 suggests that
creativity involves causes (creative potential and creative environment),
creative behavior, and creative outcomes (innovation).
B. Creative Behavior
1. Creative behavior occurs in four steps, each of which leads to the next.
a. Problem formulation: any act of creativity begins with a problem that the
behavior is designed to solve.
i. Problem formulation: the stage of creative behavior in which we
identify a problem or opportunity that requires a solution as yet
unknown.
b. Information gathering: given a problem, the solution is rarely directly at
hand. We need time to learn more and to process that learning.
i. Information gathering: the stage of creative behavior when possible
solutions to a problem incubate in an individual’s mind.
c. Idea generation: once we have collected the relevant information, it is
time to translate that knowledge into ideas.
i. Idea generation: the process of creative behavior in which we
develop possible solutions to a problem from relevant information and
knowledge.
d. Idea evaluation: finally, it’s time to choose from the ideas we have
generated.
i. Idea evaluation: the process of creative behavior in which we
evaluate potential solutions to identify the best one.
C. Causes of Creative Behavior
1. Creative potential
2. Is there such a thing as a creative personality?
a. Indeed. Most people have some of the characteristics shared by
exceptionally creative people. The more of these characteristics we have,
the higher our creative potential.
i. Intelligence and Creativity Intelligence is related to creativity. Smart
people are more creative because they are better at solving complex
problems.
ii. Personality and Creativity The Big Five personality trait of openness
to experience (see Chapter 5) correlates with creativity, probably
because open individuals are less conformist in action and more
divergent in thinking.
iii. Expertise and Creativity Expertise is the foundation for all creative
work and thus, is the single most important predictor of creative
potential.
iv. Ethics and Creativity Although creativity is linked to many desirable
individual characteristics, it is not correlated with ethicality.
3. Creative environment
4. What environmental factors affect whether creative potential translates into
creative behaviors?
a. First, and perhaps most important, is motivation. If you aren’t motivated to
be creative, it is unlikely you will be.
b. It is also valuable to work in an environment that rewards and recognizes
creative work.
c. A recent nation-level study suggests that countries scoring high on
Hofstede’s culture dimension of individuality are more creative.
d. Good leadership matters to creativity too.
e. Studies show that diverse teams can be more creative, but only under
certain conditions.
5. Creative outcomes (Innovation)
6. We can define creative outcomes as ideas or solutions judged to be novel and
useful by relevant stakeholders.
a. Novelty itself does not generate a creative outcome if it isn’t useful. Thus,
“off-the-wall” solutions are creative only if they help solve the problem.
b. Soft skills help translate ideas into results.
X. Summary and Implications for Managers
A. Individuals base their behavior not on the way their external environment actually
is, but rather on the way they see it or believe it to be.
B. An understanding of the way people make decisions can help us explain and
predict behavior, but few important decisions are simple or unambiguous enough
for the rational model’s assumptions to apply.
C. We find individuals looking for solutions that satisfice rather than optimize,
injecting biases and prejudices into the decision process, and relying on intuition.
D. Managers should encourage creativity in employees and teams to create a route to
innovative decision making.
E. Specific implications for managers are below:
1. Behavior follows perception, so to influence behavior at work, assess how
people perceive their work. Often behaviors we find puzzling can be
explained by understanding the initiating perceptions.
2. Make better decisions by recognizing perceptual biases and decision-making
errors we tend to commit. Learning about these problems doesn’t always
prevent us from making mistakes, but it does help.
3. Adjust your decision-making approach to the national culture you’re operating
in and to the criteria your organization values. If you’re in a country that
doesn’t value rationality, you don’t feel compelled to follow the rational
decision-making model or to try to make your decisions appear rational.
Adjust your decision approach to ensure compatibility with the organizational
culture.
4. Combine rational analysis with intuition. These are not conflicting approaches
to decision making. By using both, you can actually improve your decision
making effectiveness.
5. Try to enhance your creativity. Actively look for novel solutions to problems,
attempt to see problems in new ways, use analogies, and hire creative talent.
Try to remove work and organizational barriers that might impede your
creativity.
Career OBjectives
So what if I’m a few minutes late for work?
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objectives:Explain the factors that influence perception; Explain the link between perception
and decision making
Learning Outcomes: Apply the study of perception and attribution to the workplace
AASCB: Reflective thinking
I’m often late to work; something always comes up at the last minute. But my boss is
such a jerk about it! He’s threatening to install a time clock. This is so insulting—I’m in
management, I’m a professional, I’m on salary, and I do the work! Please tell me how to
talk some sense into him. —Renée
Dear Renée,
This issue seems to be very frustrating to you, and we’d like to help you eliminate that
dissatisfaction. Let’s start by analyzing why you and your boss think differently on the
issue. You and he certainly perceive of the situation differently— he sees your lateness as
a violation, and you see it as a natural occurrence. In many other jobs, precise timing may
not be expected, valued, or needed. Perhaps your boss is trying to highlight the value he
places on punctuality. Or maybe he sees your lateness as unethical behavior that cheats
your organization of your valuable work time.
According to Ann Tenbrunsel, Director of the Institute for Ethical Business Worldwide,
the way we look at our decisions changes our perception of our behaviors. You view your
tardiness as something that just happens, not part of a decision process. What if you
looked at your tardiness as a daily ethical decision? Your organization has a start time to
which you agreed as a condition of your employment, so coming in late is a deviation
from the standard. There are actions you can take throughout your early morning that
control your arrival time. So, by this model, your behavior is unethical.
Your situation is not uncommon; we all have moral blind spots, or situations with ethical
ramifications we don’t see. Also, as we said earlier, other organizations may not care
about your arrival time, so it’s not always an ethical situation. But for situations where
ethics are in play, research indicates punishment doesn’t work. Reframing the decisions
so we see the ethical implications does work. Try these steps to gain insight:
• Look at the motives for your decisions during your morning routine. Can you see where
you make choices?
• Consider your past actions. When you think back about your early morning decisions,
do you find yourself justifying your delays? Justification signals that our decisions might
be suspect.
• Look at the facts. How do the reasons for your past delays reflect attitudes you have
unconsciously acted on?
If you can see the ethical aspect of your daily lateness, you can work to meet the
expectation. Think briefly about the ethics of your morning choices when you first wake
up, and you’ll be much more likely to be on time.
Sources: C. Moore and A. E. Tenbrunsel, “’Just Think About It’? Cognitive Complexity and Moral Choice,” Organizational
Behaviorand Human Decision Processes 123, no. 2 (2014): 138–49; A. Tenbrunsel, Ethical Systems,
www.ethicalsystems.org/content/anntenbrunsel, accessed May 7, 2015; Review and podcast of Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s
Right and What to Do about It, May 4, 2015, http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9390.html, accessed May 7, 2015.
Myth or Science?
“All Stereotypes Are Negative”
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objectives:Explain the factors that influence perception; Describe attribution theory; Explain
the link between perception and decision making
Learning Outcomes: Apply the study of perception and attribution to the workplace
AASCB: Reflective thinking
This statement is false. Positive stereotypes exist as much as negative ones. A study of
Princeton University students shows, for example, that even today we believe Germans
are better workers, Italians and African Americans are more loyal, Jews and Chinese are
more intelligent, and Japanese and English are more courteous. What is surprising is that
positive stereotypes are not always positive.
We may be more likely to “choke” (fail to perform) when we identify with positive
stereotypes because they induce pressure to perform at the stereotypical level. For
example, men are commonly believed to have higher math ability than women. One
study shows that when this stereotype is activated before men take a math test, their
performance on the test actually goes down. Another study found that the belief that
white men are better at science and math than women or minorities caused white men to
leave science, technology, engineering, and math majors. Finally, a study used basketball
to illustrate the complexity of stereotypes. Researchers provided evidence to one group of
undergraduates that whites were better free throw shooters than blacks. Another group
was provided evidence that blacks were better free throw shooters than whites. A third
group was given no stereotypic information. The undergraduates in all three groups then
shot free throws while observers watched. The people who performed the worst were
those in the negative stereotype condition (black undergraduates who were told whites
were better and white undergraduates who were told blacks were better). However, the
positive stereotype group (black undergraduates who were told blacks were better and
white undergraduates who were told whites were better) also did not perform well. The
best performance was turned in by those in the group without stereotypic information.
“Choking” is not the only negative thing about positive stereotypes. Research revealed
that when women or Asian Americans heard positive stereotypes about themselves
(“women are nurturing”; “Asians are good at math”), they felt depersonalized and reacted
negatively to the individual expressing the positive stereotype. Another study showed that
positive stereotypes about African Americans actually solidified negative stereotypes
because any stereotype tends to reinforce group-based differences, whether positive or
negative.
Stereotypes are understandable. To function, we need shortcuts. This shortcut, however,
runs both ways. Because stereotypes are socially learned, we need to be vigilant about not
accepting or propagating them among our coworkers and peers.
Sources: A. C. Kay, M. V. Day, M. P. Zanna, and A. D. Nussbaum, “The Insidious (and Ironic) Effects of Positive Stereotypes,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49 (2013), pp. 287–-291; J. O. Sly and S. Cheryan, “When Compliments Fail to Flatter:
American Individualism and Responses to Positive Stereotypes,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104 (2013), pp.
87-–102; M. J. Tagler, “Choking Under the Pressure of a Positive Stereotype: Gender Identification and Self-Consciousness Moderate
Men's Math Test Performance,” The Journal of Social Psychology 152 (2012), pp. 401–-416; M. A. Beasley and M. J. Fischer, “Why
They Leave: The Impact of Stereotype Threat on the Attrition of Women and Minorities from Science, Math and Engineering Majors,”
Social Psychology of Education 15 (2012), pp. 427–-448; and A. Krendl, I. Gainsburg, and N. Ambady, “The Effects of Stereotypes
and Observer Pressure on Athletic Performance,” Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology 34 (2012), pp. 3–-15.
Class Exercise
1. Divide the class into groups of three to five students each.
2. Ask the students to reflect on situations in which they felt they were victims of a
negative stereotype.
3. Then, ask students to consider whether they have ever benefited from a positive
stereotype.
4. Finally, ask students to think about whether they have unfairly viewed others
based on a negative stereotype, or whether they have expected something because
of a positive stereotype of another individual.
5. Ask students to present their findings to the class and discuss the implications of
stereotyping, both negative and positive.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, Breeze, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
An Ethical Choice
Choosing to Lie
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objective: Contrast the three ethical decision criteria
Learning Outcome: Apply the study of perception and attribution to the workplace
AACSB: Ethical understanding and reasoning; Reflective thinking
Mark Twain wrote, “The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie
thoughtfully.” Not everyone agrees that lying is wrong. But we probably agree that
people do lie, including each of us, to varying degrees. And most of us probably agree
that if we lied less, organizations and society would be better off. So how might that be
done? Research conducted by behavioral scientists suggests some steps to recovery.
1. Stop lying to ourselves. We lie to ourselves about how much we lie. Specifically, many
studies reveal that we deem ourselves much less likely to lie than we judge others to
be. At a collective level, this is impossible—everyone can’t be below above average in
their propensity to lie. So Step 1 is to admit the truth: We underestimate the degree to
which we lie, we overestimate our morality compared to others, and we tend to engage
in what Bazerman and Tenbrunsel call “moral hypocrisy”—we think we’re more moral
than we are.
2. Trust, but verify. A recent study showed that lying is learned at a very young age.
When a toy was placed out of view, an experimenter told young children not to look at
the toy, and went out of sight. More than 80 percent of the children looked at the toy.
When asked whether they had looked, 25 percent of 2½ year-olds lied, compared to 90
percent of four-year-olds. Why do we learn to lie? Because we often get away with it.
Negotiation research shows that we are more likely to lie in the future when our lies
have succeeded or gone undetected in the past. Managers need to identify areas where
lying is costly and find ways to shine a light on it when it occurs.
3. Reward honesty. “The most difficult thing is to recognize that sometimes we too are
blinded by our own incentives,” writes Dan Ariely, “because we don’t see how our
conflicts of interest work on us.” So if we want more honesty, we have to provide
greater incentives for the truth, and more disincentives for lying and cheating.
Sources: Based on D. Ariely, The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—and Especially Ourselves. (New York:
Harper, (2012); K. Canavan, “Even Nice People Cheat Sometimes,” The Wall Street Journal (August 8, 2012), p. 4B; M. H. Bazerman
and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It (2012) Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2012; A. D. Evans and K. Lee, “Emergence of Lying in Very Young Children,” Developmental Psychology (2013);
and L. Zhou Y. Sung, and D. Zhang, “Deception Performance in Online Group Negotiation and Decision Making: The Effects of
Deception Experience and Deception Skill,” Group Decision and Negotiation 22 (2013), pp. 153–-172.
Class Exercise
1. Divide the class into three groups.
2. Ask each group to list situations in which they feel lying is acceptable.
3. Then, ask students whether they would lie to protect a friend, to save their job,
or to move ahead in their job.
4. As a group, students should compare their responses to the three questions and
evaluate why they differ.
5. Finally, ask students to think about what could prevent them from lying in
each of the situations. Would the same solution apply in all cases?
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, Breeze, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
Personal Inventory Assessments
How Creative Are You?
Everyone is innovative, to some degree. Take this PIA to find out if you are wildly or
mildly creative.
Point/Counterpoint
Stereotypes are Dying
This exercise contributes to:
Learning Objectives: Explain the factors that influence perception; Describe attribution theory; Contrast
the rational model of decision making with bounded rationality and intuition
Learning Outcome: Apply the study of perception and attribution to the workplace
AACSB: Reflective thinking
Point
In the Myth or Science? feature in this chapter, we discussed the harmful effects of
stereotypes, even positive ones. Fortunately, stereotypes are dying a slow but inexorable
death. Whether they are about women, racial or ethnic minorities, or gays, each passing
year brings evidence that stereotypes are losing their hold—thanks to the progress of
society, but also thanks to younger individuals replacing older ones in the workforce.
Younger people are less likely to endorse stereotypes across the board.
In the 1930s, when asked whether African Americans were “superstitious,” 84 percent
agreed; 75 percent endorsed a stereotype that African Americans were “lazy.” Thankfully,
those stereotypes are nearly gone. Results vary by study, but today between 0 and 10
percent of individuals agree with those stereotypes. These results show that racism still
exists, but they also show it is waning.
Even when people endorse stereotypes, their consensus has weakened dramatically over
time. For example, if forced to choose 10 adjectives to describe a group of people, at one
time people converged on a few (often incorrect) traits. Today, their lists will vary
dramatically by person.
There is another factor at play here: the media. Media reports are not a good source of
scientific information, yet to listen to them, you’d think stereotypes were as alive as ever.
Fortunately, that’s not the case, but when stereotypes fade, it’s not newsworthy. Someday
soon, stereotypic thinking will be as retrograde as outright acts of racism or sexism. We
should count ourselves lucky to live in societies and work in organizations where such
thinking and behavior are viewed quite negatively.
Counterpoint
Unfortunately, stereotypes are alive and well. We may have just become better at hiding
them. People conceal negative stereotypes in favor of emphasizing positive ones,
especially when communicating publicly (to a casual acquaintance) rather than privately
(to a close friend). When someone communicates a negative stereotype, listeners think
less of the communicator, even when they agree. Research shows that people do not
communicate their negative stereotypes to others because they know that expressing
stereotypes may make them look bad.
We cannot assume that unspoken stereotypes are benign. A prejudice unexpressed is no
less a prejudice. Negative stereotypes don’t magically reverse themselves over time.
Thankfully, positive stereotypes help to balance out the equation a little bit, and negative
stereotypes can change when they are openly refuted. For example, nearly half (48.9
percent) of individuals describe Italians as “passionate”—and that has remained stable
over time—whereas only 1.5 percent now describe them as “cowardly”—which declined
greatly over time.
The decline of a few negative stereotypes may seem like progress, but it’s less than it
seems. All stereotypes are undesirable, positive stereotypes beget negative ones, and the
negative ones haven’t gone away; they’ve just been driven underground. We can only
really hope to eliminate stereotypes by addressing them openly. When such prejudices are
concealed, they are harder to change.
Time and the entrance of younger individuals into society and organizations have not
eliminated or necessarily even reduced stereotypes. Ironically, even the assertion that
younger workers are less likely to hold stereotypes than older ones relies on a stereotype
(that older people are more likely to be prejudiced)!
Sources: J. L. Skorinko and S. A. Sinclair, “Perspective Taking Can Increase Stereotyping: The Role of Apparent Stereotype
Confirmation,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 49 (2013), pp. 10–-18; and H. B. Bergsieker, L. M. Leslie, V. S.
Constantine, and S. T. Fiske, “Stereotyping by Omission: Eliminate the Negative, Accentuate the Positive,” Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology 102 (2012), pp. 1214–-1238.
Class Exercise
1. Divide the class into pairs of groups of three each.
2. Assign one group out of each pair to take the Point position and the other
group in the pair to take the Counterpoint position.
3. The groups should prepare for a class debate on each position.
4. Have each pair present its reason for supporting the position.
5. Take a vote among the remainder of the class for the winning side.
Teaching Notes
This exercise is applicable to face-to-face classes or synchronous online classes such as
BlackBoard 9.1, Breeze, WIMBA, and Second Life Virtual Classrooms. See
http://www.baclass.panam.edu/imob/SecondLife for more information.
