Week 5 Handout for Students

MGX5680 Week 5 Handout Page 1

MGX5680 SEMESTER 1, 2015

WEEK 5 HANDOUT FOR STUDENTS

To be read in conjunction with Week 5 Lecture Slides

Contact details:

Chief Examiner / Lecturer / Tutor : Dr. Robyn Cochrane [email protected] Mail Box 21, Level 7, Building N, Caulfield Campus +61 9905 9974 (business hours)

Action items for Week 5:

1. Students to submit assessment task 1. 2. Students to download the following learning resources located in the Week 5 tab and/or in the folder labelled

Assessment information in the Unit Guide tab: a. Week 5 Lecture Slides b. Readings for Week 5 c. Activate the hyperlinks provided in the Lecture slides and review the online resources d. Assessment documents:

i. Quick guide to APA referencing ii. Active reading and writing guide

iii. Task3_ Reflective Writing Instructions iv. Assessment rubrics for all assessment tasks

3. Students will need regular access to the prescribed textbook hard copy format or e-text is suitable for this Unit. Bazerman, M.H. & Moore, D.A. (2013) Judgment in Managerial Decision Making (8th ed). Wiley, USA.

4. Note: Amended requirements in red for assessment task 2 (from Slide 8): Students must refer to at least 12 but no more than 20 academic sources to provide a detailed explanation, as follows: textbook (Bazerman & Moore, 2013) or an earlier edition if students do not have access to the 2013 edition; academic sources listed in the weekly reading list (including the listed book chapters); at least five independently sourced scholarly, peer-reviewed articles accessed via the Monash University library databases. The use of other textbooks or information from other internet sources is not acceptable. Students seeking to focus on decision making in a specific context (ie. a single person or organisation) should access and cite from published sources not websites or blogs these references are additional to the five independently sourced scholarly, peer-reviewed articles. Word limit: 2,400 (including reference list) (+/- 10% is acceptable). Weighting: 40%

5. Slide 11: please ignore the first listed hyperlink my error. 6. Slide 13: review handout Planning your essay (see Appendix 1).

Discussion/reflection questions from the Week 5 Lecture Slides: Slide 23: Is there evidence of availability heuristics and common biases in your decision-making processes?

Identify some instances where availability heuristics are beneficial and situations where they are potentially harmful or problematic.

Slide 29: Is there evidence of representativeness heuristics and common biases in your decision-making processes? Identify some instances where representativeness heuristics are beneficial and situations where they are potentially harmful or problematic.

Preparation recommended for Week 6:

Topic: Bounded awareness Review the Week 6 readings Start planning and preparing the essay and review the resources (Assessment Task 2) Continue with reflective writing (Assessment Task 3)


Slide 35: Which confirmation heuristics and common biases operate in your decision-making processes? Identify some instances where confirmation heuristics are beneficial and situations where they are potentially harmful or problematic. If heuristics or short cuts lead to adequate decisions then what is the issue?

Slide 36: How can we unfreeze workplace decision making patterns by showing how easily heuristics become biases when improperly applied? How can we use our knowledge of heuristics and biases to improve workplace processes and decisions relating to (internal communication, budgeting, recruitment, topic of your choice)?

Activities from the Week 5 Lecture Slides:

Slide 13: Review handout Planning your essay (see Appendix 1).


Slide 23: Is there evidence of availability heuristics and common biases in your decision-making processes? Identify some instances where availability heuristics are beneficial and situations where they are potentially harmful or problematic.

Slide 29: Is there evidence of representativeness heuristics and common biases in your decision-making processes? Identify some instances where representativeness heuristics are beneficial and situations where they are potentially harmful or problematic.


Slide 35: Which confirmation heuristics and common biases operate in your decision-making processes? Identify some instances where confirmation heuristics are beneficial and situations where they are potentially harmful or problematic. If heuristics or short cuts lead to adequate decisions then what is the issue?

Explanatory or additional content to consider for selected Week 5 Lecture slides:

After Slide 5 (new content)

Reflection on Week 4: Lecturer comments

Sources of influence formal and informal organisation


After Slide 35 (new content)

Insights from the Week 5 readings.

Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier (2011): Definition: A heuristic is a strategy that ignores part of the information, with the goal of making decisions more quickly, frugally and/or accurately than more complex methods (p. 454). All heuristics rely on effort reduction by one or more of the following: Examining fewer cues Reducing the effort of retrieving cue values Simplifying the weighting of cues Integrating less information Examining fewer alternatives

Organisations seem ideally suited to the application of heuristics because of the inherent uncertainty and the pressure to act quickly (p. 459).

Recognition-based decision making: (pp. 460-462) Recognition heuristic: if one of two alternatives is recognised and the other is not, then infer that the recognised

alternative has the higher value with respect to the criterion leads to the tendency to rely on recognition and ignore strong, contradictory cues.

Fluency heuristic: if both alternatives are recognised but one is recognised faster, then infer that this alternative has the higher value with respect to the criterion.

Take-the-first heuristic: choose the first alternative that comes to mind.

One-reason decision making: (pp. 463-468) One-clever-cue heuristic: ie. Animal species Take-the-best heuristic: search through cues in order of their validity; stop on finding the first cue that

discriminates between the alternatives; infer that the alternative with the positive cue value has the higher criterion value

Fast-and-frugal trees: search through cues in a predetermined order; stop search as soon as a cue leads to an exist; classify the object accordingly

Trade-off heuristics: (pp. 469-470) Tallying: ignores weights, weighting all cues equally decide on the alternative that is favoured by more cues Mapping model: assumes that people tally the number of relevant cues with an objectives positive values to

arrive at a quantitative estimate 1/N rule: simple heuristic for the equal allocation of resources (time, money) to N alternatives


APPENDIX 1: MGX5680 Week 5 Planning your essay (2 pages)

Introduction Background/context - Indicate your interpretation of the topic and key terms Limit the scope of your discussion State your argument Outline your essay structure Paragraph 1: Topic sentence Explanation Evidence/example Comment Link/transition

Paragraph 2: Topic sentence Explanation Evidence/example Comment Link/transition






Conclusion Summarise sub-topics/main points Re-state thesis statement in another way You could include implications for the future Do not introduce new information or include in-text citations


Paragraph planning exercise

Topic sentence Clear sentence, states what entire paragraph is about

Explanation explains/discusses the topic sentence

Evidence/example provides in-text citations to support discussion

Comment states HOW evidence supports thesis/topic

Link/transition concludes sub-topic, refers to next sub-topic

Documents

Week 5 Handout for Students