Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Hot Topic: Bye Bye Telecommuting?
When Marissa Mayer left a successful stint at Google to become Yahoo!’s CEO she banned
telecommuting. Mayer’s stated goal was to bring face–to-face collaboration back to the Yahoo!
culture and -increase innovation in the process.
Ask students their position on telecommuting? Does experience tell you that it works or doesn’t?
Is it something that they are looking for in an employer? Does Mayer’s decision show courage in
the face of a popular but not necessarily performance-friendly practice? Or, was it a premature
rush to blame work-at–home practices for what she perceived as Yahoo!’s failures of
collaboration and innovation?
Insight: Self-Confidence Builds Better Decisions
Does confidence put a spring into your step and a smile on your face? It’s a powerful force,
Students will make a decision over the following case:
Situation: A massive hurricane has damaged a railroad bridge over a large lake. The bridge is
critical for relief eff orts to aid a devastated city. You are leading a repair team of 100. Two
alternatives are on the table: Rebuild using new tracks, or rebuild with old track salvaged from
the lake. Question: How do you proceed?
Quick Case: It’s Time to Ask for a Raise
As a class discussion, ask students to describe what they will say and do to get their boss to agree
that they deserve a raise. Ask students to prepare a narrative that presents the exact words,
Schermerhorn & Bachrach Exploring Management 6th edition Instructor’s Manual
Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 4-15
justifications, and dollar target they would use to ask for a raise in their future job. Alternatively,
ask them to assume they have been working in their chosen career field for five years, have
developed lots of expertise and earned high performance reports, and now want a raise.
Skill Building Portfolio
Terms to Define
Analytic competency
Anchoring and adjustment heuristic
Availability heuristic
Cost-benefit analysis
Creativity
Crisis
Decision
Decision-making process
Escalating commitment
Framing error
Information competency
Intuitive thinking
Knowledge workers
Risk environment
Satisficing decision
Spotlight questions
Schermerhorn Exploring Management 5th edition Instructor’s Manual
TestPrep 4: Multiple-Choice Questions
Multiple-Choice Questions
1. A manager who is reactive and works hard to address problems after they occur is
described as a _____________.
2. A problem is a discrepancy between a/an _____________ situation and a desired
situation.
3. If a manager approaches problems in a rational and analytical way, trying to solve them in
step-by-step fashion. He or she is well described as a/an _____________.
4. The first step in the decision-making process is to _____________.
(a) generate a list of alternatives
5. When the members of a special task force are asked to develop a proposal for increasing
the international sales of a new product, this problem most likely requires _____________
decisions.
6. Costs, benefits, timeliness, and _____________ are among the recommended criteria for
evaluating alternative courses of action in the decision-making process.
Schermerhorn Exploring Management 5th edition Instructor’s Manual
13. When a manager makes a decision about someone’s annual pay raise only after
looking at the person’s current salary, the risk is that the decision will be biased because
of _____________.
14. Personal creativity drivers include creativity skills, task expertise, and _____________.
15. The last step in the decision-making process is to _____________.
Schermerhorn Exploring Management 5th edition Instructor’s Manual
Short-Response Questions
16. How does an optimizing decision differ from a satisficing decision?
17. What is the difference between a risk environment and an uncertain environment in
decision making?
A risk environment is one in which things are not known for sure—all of the possible
18. How can you tell from people’s behavior if they tend to be systematic or intuitive in
problem solving?
19. What is escalating commitment and how can it be avoided?
Escalating commitment is the tendency of people to keep investing in a previously
chosen course of action, continuing to pursue it, even though it is not working. This is
Integration and Application Questions:
20. With the goals of both expanding your resumé and gaining valuable experience, you have
joined a new mentoring program between your university and a local high school. One of the
first activities is for you and your teammates to offer “learning modules” to a class of
sophomores. You have volunteered to give a presentation and engage them in some learning
activities on the topic: “Individual versus group decision making: Is one better than the other?”
Schermerhorn Exploring Management 5th edition Instructor’s Manual
Question: What will you say and do, and why?
This is what I would say. On the question of whether a group decision is best or an individual
decision is best, the appropriate answer is probably: It all depends on the situation. Sometimes
Self-Assessment 4: Maximizer or Satisficer Quick Check
Instructions
Answer the following questions in the way that most often describes your behavior.
Yes No 1. I am a frequent channel surfer when watching TV.
Yes No 2. I try on a lot of outfits before purchasing clothes.
Yes No 3. It’s hard for me to choose movies for pleasure viewing.
Yes No 4. I’m careful about relationships, trying to find the perfect fi t.
Scoring and Interpretation
The more “Yes” answers, the more you tend toward a “maximizer” decision making approach
that tries to find the optimum or absolute best course of action. The more “No” answers, the
more you tend toward a “satisficer” approach that seeks a satisfactory course of action that is
Schermerhorn Exploring Management 5th edition Instructor’s Manual
Class Exercise 4: Lost at Sea
Consider This Situation
You are adrift on a private yacht in the South Pacific when a fire of unknown origin destroys the
yacht and most of its contents. You and a small group of survivors are now in a large raft with oars.
Individual ranking Team ranking Expert ranking
Sextant _______________ ____________ ____________
Shaving mirror _______________ ____________ ____________
5 gallons water _______________ ____________ ____________
Mosquito netting _______________ ____________ ____________
Small transistor radio _______________ ____________ ____________
Shark repellent _______________ ____________ ____________
20 square feet black plastic _______________ ____________ ____________
1 quart 20-proof rum _______________ ____________ ____________
Instructions
1. Working alone, rank the 15 items in order of their importance to your survival (1 is most
important and 15 is least important).
3. Do not write in column 3 until your instructor provides the “expert” ranking.
Schermerhorn Exploring Management 5th edition Instructor’s Manual
Team Project 4: Crisis Management Realities
Question
What types of crises do business leaders face and how do they deal with them?
Instructions
• Identify three crisis events from the recent local, national, and international business news.
Practice Critical Thinking: Case: Amazon.com – Keeping the Fire Hot
The case for this chapter is “Amazon.com – Keeping the Fire Hot.” The sidebar case is Netflix.
Amazon.com is not only the e-commerce company to beat, but it also keeps changing as it
grows. No one is ever sure what will come next under the guidance of founder and CEO Jeff
Bezos. Seeming not to worry about current earnings per share, Bezos keeps investing to make his
company stronger and harder to catch. Its millions of square feet of distribution fulfillment space
keep growing domestically and around the globe.
Students have probably visited Amazon.com as a customer. Encourage them to visit the website
again from the perspective of evaluating the decision making process of the company.
Case discussion questions and suggested answers:
1. DISCUSSION
Bezos once said: “Amazon may break even or even lose money on the sale of its devices.”
The company expects to recoup the money later through the sale of products, with a further
boost from its annual Prime membership fee. In what ways does this strategy show Bezos as
a systematic and intuitive thinker?
Schermerhorn Exploring Management 5th edition Instructor’s Manual
• Gift card sales are brisk
• Of the $45.2 billion in revenue Amazon obtained last year from non-U.S. markets—the
lion’s share of which is e-commerce related—$14.1 billion came from Germany, $10.8
Kiva and Zappos acquisitions?
• In 2009 Amazon.com bought a small competitor, online shoe merchant Zappos, for
$1.2 billion. It was an unusual deal in that Amazon (AMZN, -1.37%) promised to
leave Zappos alone so long as it hit certain financial targets. Tony Hsieh, CEO of
Zappos, wrote the following year that the relationship between Zappos and Amazon
was “governed by a document that formally recognizes the uniqueness of Zappos’s
culture and Amazon’s duty to protect it. We think of Amazon as a giant consulting
Major competitors:
• In the media segment, Amazon competes with auction site eBay (EBAY); media game-
changer Netflix (NFLX); Time Warner Cable (TWX); Apple (AAPL) with iTunes;
Google (GOOG) with its Play Store; and media producer Liberty Interactive
(QVCB).
• Amazon has several competitors in the electronics and general merchandise segment,
many of which are brick and mortar rivals including Best Buy, Family Dollar,
Schermerhorn Exploring Management 5th edition Instructor’s Manual
• In the ecommerce segment, Alibaba is Amazon’s biggest competitor.
Is Bezos making the right decisions as he guides the firm through today’s many business and
management challenges?
Student answers will vary, but on most accounts, he has. Bezos says “Day 2 companies make
high-quality decisions, but they make high-quality decisions slowly. To keep the energy and
Additional Exercises for Chapter 4
Assign teams to develop a decision-making process for buying a used car for, say, $7,000. This
should include a consensus ranking of the top 5 criteria they would use and evaluate in their
selection. Where would they look for the cars? How many cars or models would they examine
before they would feel comfortable making their decision? What are the benefits of looking at
more cars? What are the disadvantages, if any? Were they able to optimize or satisfice?