Monday, March 7, 2011

DECISION MAKING AND ETHICAL BEHAVIOR ( CLASS MARCH 03-2011)

Summary

Effective decision: a timely decision that meets a desired objective and is  acceptable to those individuals affected by it models of decision making.models:

  • rational model: Describes how individuals should behave in order to optimize some outcome
  • bounded rationality model: a theory that suggests that there are limits upon how rational a decision maker can actually be
  • garbage can model: a theory that contends that decisions in  organizations are random and unsystematic


escalation of commitment: The tendency to continue to commit resources to a
failing course of action

participative decision making: Decision making in which individuals who are affected by decisions influence the making of those decisions.

Group-think:A deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment resulting from pressures within the group.Consequences:
  • Incomplete survey of alternatives
  • Failure to evaluate the risks of the preferred course of action
  • Biased information processing


Cultural differences in decision making
  •  Problems selected
  • Time orientation
  • Importance of logic and rationality
  • Belief in the ability of people to solve problems
  • Preference for collecting decision making


Ethics:

Morals: the values and principles that distinguish right from wrong

Ethics: behavioral norms and rules. Do the right thing.

Social responsibility: obligation of an organization to behave in ethical way in the social environment in which it operates

Ethical Behavior: Acting in ways consistent with one’s personal values and the commonly held values of the organization and society.

Question

How can organizations effectively manage both risk taking and escalation of commitment in the decision-making behavior of employees?


With the escalation of commitment  and risk people ignore the course of action based on future benefits minus any costs. Their whole decision is based on the sunk costs in the project.  Managerial decision making needs to take into account of the going concern and when to terminate a failed project.

the organization should recognizing when a decision is working, when it isn’t and how much time should be given to a decision that hasn´t. also is better when  the company recognizes past present and future with emotional detachment.  They must recognize this in relation to costs that have been spent, are being spent and will be spent. With this a proper understanding of sunk costs is possible. If it is a cost that has already been incurred or there is an obligation to incur it than it is a sunk cost. Like a sunken ship the money is spent, it is sunk. In other words going forward recognizing escalation of commitment and risk means recognizing the cost is sunk and won’t be coming back.

References:

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PERSONALITY, PERCEPTION AND ATTRIBUTION + ATTITUDES AND VALUES ( CLASS FEBRUARY 10- 2011)

Summary

Personality: A relatively stable set of characteristics that influence an individual’s behavior. Personality dispositions include:

  • Emotions
  • Cognitions
  • Attitudes
  • Expectancies
  • Fantasies


Social Perception: The process of interpreting information about another person. 3 categories of factors influence our perception of another person:
  • Characteristics of ourselves, as perceivers
  • Characteristics of the targetperson we are perceiving
  • Characteristics of the situationin which the interaction takes place

 People´s perception is affected by internal factors such as personal experiences, personality and external factors such as stimuli from environment and context in which they operate.

Barriers to Social Perception
  1. .Selective perception
  2. .Stereotyping
  3. .First-impression error
  4. .Projection: “the false-consensus effect”
  5. .Self-fulfilling prophecies

Attitude: A psychological tendency expressed by evaluating an entity with some degree of favor or disfavor.Work attitudes:
  •  Job Satisfaction
  • Organizational commitment

Values: enduring beliefs that a specific mode of conduct or end state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end state of existence. Work Values:
  • Achievement
  • Concern for others
  • Honesty
  • Fairness

Attribution Theory:A theory that explains how individuals pinpoint the causes of their own behavior and that of others. This theory fall into 2 categories:Internal attribution associate with personal factors such as personality, ability and motivation. In contrast external attribution is related to environment factors such as organizational rules, luck and natural environment 

Organizational Commitment: The strength of an individual’s identification with an organization.It consists of:
  1. Affective commitment
  2. Continuance commitment
  3. Normative commitment

Question:
To what do you attribute the success of JICA?


The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is advancing its activities around the pillars of a field-oriented approach, human security, and enhanced effectiveness, efficiency, and speed. The success of JICA is because it works with cross cultural management taking the values and attitudes of different countries something important to the success of the projects, so it is devoted to enhancing donor coordination and working together to increase effectiveness. The success of jica also is due to this agency make use of diverse approaches and take advantage of the expanded scale of our operations to tackle issues that go beyond borders and affect entire regions or that span multiple sectors. Through such integrated assistance, New JICA will pursue international cooperation with even more development impact in terms of both its quality and scale.


References

  • Harrison, D.A., Newman, D.A., Roth, P.L. 2006. How important are job attitudes?
  • http://www.jica.go.jp/
  • www.personalitypage.com/ 
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MOTIVATION ( CLASS FEBRUARY 17-2011)


Summary:

Motivation: factors that simulate desire and energy in people, to be interested in a job or role and to be exert persistent effort in attending a goal.




Need:a state or condition within an individual that generates movement toward some outcome or reward.

Managers cannot assume they understand employees’ needs. They should recognize the variety of needs that motivate employee behavior and ask employees for input to better understand their needs.






In the class were referred to various  theories of motivation which can be very effective to apply to certain people but no one that can be used for all cases, because people are very different and have different priorities and act based on different things according to moral maturity. taken as an incentive ethical principles (morally mature) or egocentric motivations (morally immature).


A person, man or woman is motivated when he or she wants to do something. while a person could be enthusiastic about a stimulus, her main reason for achieving something could be the fear of failure, the desire to distinguish herself from the others, the wish of acquiring knowledge, and other things.

the motivation of a person covers all the reasons for which he choses to act in a certain manner.

Question:
In multicultural organizational contexts what could be a good strategy to keep people motivated towards a common task?

As people are different and have diverse priorities, I think a good strategy would be to first know the variety of employee needs to understand and implement the solution that will motivate them, whether economic incentives, awards, symbols of differentiation or consent which make workers feel the desire to perform assigned tasks. To complement this strategy I propose trainings, and assign specific tasks that make employees feel more skills and experience to perform common tasks and achieve business goals.



References:


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Saturday, March 5, 2011

THE RISE OF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION (CLASS FEBRUARY 24- 2011)

SUMMARY OF THE CLASS



The class was about corporations and the development was based in a video called "THE CORPORATION" that explains issues as the progressive development of the corporations during the history and how the people have used them to make their own profits. The video explains that corporations are an efficient creation that is based in a business community that gives as an excellent definition that is: "corporations are a group of individuals working together to achieve specific objectives".
The history of the corporations starts in 1712 in Britain during the industrial age. Corporations act as legal persons, they have rights and their basic objective is to make as much money as they can, to grow and have profits, a corporation is like an externalized machine.
Actually corporations are part of the society, they are in the decision making of the government, they are playing an important role in the globalization process, but them, they have an environmental role, if they make disasters in the environment they have to pay for that, the problem is that even though they pay for the disasters, maybe the environment wouldn’t be equal and people, animals and plants are being affected by this.
Corporations can't do whatever they want, they have a lot of obligations and implications in each decision, but really, the objective of corporations is to be aggressive in the market, to face the competition. People want money, not to be nice and good.


Question:

In this documentary, corporations are defined as “legal entities” and they meet the clinical definition of psychopathic behavior. Do you agree, why, or why not?

I agree that corporations or legal entities fulfill the definition of psychopathic behavior, because behavior like this, companies are behaving selfishly, without giving importance to the rights of others, are constantly in conflict with society, act to have its own satisfaction and they have no moral awareness. Corporations are forced to put the money and profits before the interest of others.


RESOURCES:



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