Q&A Hero

Q: Selene and Rita Selene and Rita are both engineers at a highly innovative technology company. They are both very creative people. Selene has 15 years of engineering background, a high need for achievement and strong task motivation, whereas Rita prides herself on her high openness to experience, strong self-direction and her ability to evaluate the potential usefulness of ideas. According to the characteristics of creative people, which areas are Selene's strongest? A. Independent imagination and experience B. Persistence and practical intelligence C. Cognitive and practical intelligence D. Experience and persistence E. Experience only

Q: ABC Corporation Dora and Keith are managers at ABC Corporation. Keith is having problems in his department with a lack of innovation. In response, he consults the corporate procedures manual and speaks with his boss about the right way to solve the problem. Dora is also having a similar problem in her own department but decides to confront it by hosting team luncheons where she can learn new perspectives and discuss new "outside the box" ways to deal with the problem. Dora is an example of a(n) _______________ thinker. A. divergent B. innovative C. procedural D. convergent E. illumination

Q: ABC Corporation Dora and Keith are managers at ABC Corporation. Keith is having problems in his department with a lack of innovation. In response, he consults the corporate procedures manual and speaks with his boss about the right way to solve the problem. Dora is also having a similar problem in her own department but decides to confront it by hosting team luncheons where she can learn new perspectives and discuss new "outside the box" ways to deal with the problem. Keith is an example of a(n) ________________ thinker. A. divergent B. innovative C. procedural D. convergent E. illumination

Q: InnoBLAST, Inc. George is a manager for InnoBLAST Inc., a web-based applications company. In an attempt to promote new ideas, George decides to allow his engineering team to devote 15% of their work time to whatever projects they would like to work on and reduces their assigned workload. He then institutes a 30 minute period each morning where the team members are asked to look over their current project list for the day and develop more knowledge about a task before they move on to work on their assigned tasks. The time period set aside each morning should help promote which stage of the creative process? A. Preparation B. Incubation C. Illumination D. Verification E. Both preparation and incubation

Q: InnoBLAST, Inc. George is a manager for InnoBLAST Inc., a web-based applications company. In an attempt to promote new ideas, George decides to allow his engineering team to devote 15% of their work time to whatever projects they would like to work on and reduces their assigned workload. He then institutes a 30 minute period each morning where the team members are asked to look over their current project list for the day and develop more knowledge about a task before they move on to work on their assigned tasks. George is attempting to promote: A. employee relations. B. employee creativity. C. employee work/life balance. D. a learning-oriented culture. E. task-orientation.

Q: Sarine's Dolls With funding from her family, Sarine is currently developing a new line of dolls for her business which she hopes will take her company to the next level. At first, she encountered some minor problems with the construction of the dolls and spent a fair amount of money engineering a way to enable them to be like she envisioned. Unfortunately, she then found out that there was a patent protecting the way the dolls arms were connected, so she spent more money redesigning the dolls. After an unexpectedly uninterested response from the public in the dolls, she decided that they needed to be marketed differently in order to sell. So Sarine allocated more resources to marketing and had the packaging of the dolls redesigned and created new set of advertising materials. The cost of manufacturing these dolls has now exceeded four times the initial proposed cost, but she is determined to make it work. She is embarrassed by how this has gone, but continues to put on a brave front. What could Sarine have done differently in order to avoid this escalation of commitment with her decisions? A. Ensure that the people who evaluate the decisions are not the people who originally made them. B. Publicly establish a preset level at which the decision is abandoned or reevaluated. C. Find a source of systematic and clear feedback. D. Involve several people in the evaluation of the decision. E. All of these would be effective.

Q: Sarine's Dolls With funding from her family, Sarine is currently developing a new line of dolls for her business which she hopes will take her company to the next level. At first, she encountered some minor problems with the construction of the dolls and spent a fair amount of money engineering a way to enable them to be like she envisioned. Unfortunately, she then found out that there was a patent protecting the way the dolls arms were connected, so she spent more money redesigning the dolls. After an unexpectedly uninterested response from the public in the dolls, she decided that they needed to be marketed differently in order to sell. So Sarine allocated more resources to marketing and had the packaging of the dolls redesigned and created new set of advertising materials. The cost of manufacturing these dolls has now exceeded four times the initial proposed cost, but she is determined to make it work. She is embarrassed by how this has gone, but continues to put on a brave front. Sarine is most likely making decisions to continue with these dolls at this point because of: A. Self-justification B. Self-enhancement C. A decline of commitment D. Prospect theory E. Closing costs

Q: Paragon Company Alvin, the production manager at the Paragon Company, wants to select the best supplier of raw materials from among several vendors. He has several choices and has done research into which company provides the best services and products. One company is known to be extremely timely, another is much lower in price but often late in deliveries, and the third is well-known to provide the highest quality products available. According to the rational choice decision making process, the first step in solving this problem would be: A. Choosing the best decision process. B. Evaluating the decision inputs. C. Researching the problem. D. Identifying the problem or opportunity. E. All of these should occur simultaneously.

Q: Paragon Company Alvin, the production manager at the Paragon Company, wants to select the best supplier of raw materials from among several vendors. He has several choices and has done research into which company provides the best services and products. One company is known to be extremely timely, another is much lower in price but often late in deliveries, and the third is well-known to provide the highest quality products available. According to the Rational Choice Paradigm of decision making, Alvin should select the vendor that offers the most: A. discounts. B. deliveries. C. utility. D. expectancy. E. quality.

Q: Employees should NOT make the decision alone (without the manager's involvement) when: A. their goals and norms conflict with the organization's objectives. B. they lack commitment to decisions made by the boss alone. C. they possess more knowledge than the manager. D. the employees are likely to disagree with each other regarding the preferred solution. E. the problem calls for a nonprogrammed decision.

Q: A higher level of employee involvement is preferable when: A. management and employees possess the same information regarding the problem. B. the problem relates to a nonprogrammed decision. C. employee's goals and norms conflict with the organization's objectives. D. employees are likely to disagree with each other regarding the preferred solution. E. most of the employees in the organization are inexperienced.

Q: The benefits of employee involvement increase with: A. the routineness and similarity of the problem or opportunity. B. management's knowledge of the situation. C. the standardization and repetitiveness of the problem or opportunity. D. the number and similarity of employees involved in the decision. E. the novelty and complexity of the problem or opportunity.

Q: Decision structure, risk of conflict, and decision commitment are the: A. three conditions required for bounded rationality. B. factors that support implicit favorites. C. contingencies of employee involvement. D. factors that lead to escalation of commitment. E. constraints of team decision making.

Q: Which of the following is true at the highest level of employee involvement? A. Participation involves asking employees for information. B. The entire decision making process is handed over to employees. C. Specific employees provide information to the management, and management makes the recommendations. D. Employees tend to disagree with each other regarding the preferred solution. E. Employees are told about the problem and they provide recommendations to the decision maker.

Q: Which of the following is the lowest level of employee involvement? A. Consult with individuals B. Ask employees for specific information C. Describe the problem to employees and ask for information D. Create a team to make the decision E. Create a team to make recommendations

Q: Which of these is also referred to as participative management? A. Employee involvement B. Escalation of commitment C. Creativity D. Implicit favorite E. Divergent thinking

Q: Which of the following involves listing different dimensions of a system and the elements of each dimension and then looking at each combination? A. Cross pollination B. Impromptu storytelling C. Redefining the problem D. Morphological analysis E. Illumination

Q: What do impromptu storytelling, morphological analysis, and artwork have in common? A. They are forms of cross-pollination. B. They increase the risk of bounded rationality. C. They are forms of associative play. D. They significantly weaken the creative process. E. They used mainly to improve the rational choice process.

Q: People tend to be more creative when they: A. have a reasonable level of job security. B. are secluded from others in the organization. C. are under extreme time-pressure. D. have relatively low experience. E. have low openness to experience.

Q: You have just received seed money for a new e-commerce business and you want to hire a dozen people with a high level of creative potential. To hire the most creative people, you would select applicants who have: A. no experience in this industry, high analytic intelligence, and relatively low need for achievement. B. high degree of nonconformity, value self-direction, and relatively low need for affiliation. C. strong mental models regarding their field of knowledge, high synthetic intelligence, and relatively high need for social approval. D. high need for affiliation, high need for achievement and high need for social approval. E. low openness to experience, high need for social approval, and relatively low need for affiliation.

Q: A marketing specialist needed to find a new way of marketing the company's main product to its potential clients. While watching a movie one evening, the marketing specialist saw a scene that gave her inspiration for a new marketing plan. According to the creative process model, which of the following is the next stage in the creative process after such inspiration? A. Preparation B. Incubation C. Verification D. Illumination E. Morphological analysis

Q: The illumination stage in the creative process: A. provides a tested solution to complex problems. B. occurs after the verification stage in the process. C. generates long-lasting thoughts in the memory. D. is characterized by convergent thinking. E. can be quickly lost if not documented.

Q: In the creative process, which of the following refers to the experience of suddenly becoming aware of a unique idea? A. Incubation B. Illumination C. Preparation D. Verification E. Convergent thinking

Q: Which of the following is assisted by incubation in the creative process? A. Escalation of commitment B. Prospect theory effect C. Convergent thinking D. Divergent thinking E. Decision choice

Q: Which of the following refers to calculating the conventionally accepted "right answer" to a logical problem? A. Divergent thinking B. Convergent thinking C. Logical validity D. Escalation of commitment E. Confirmation bias

Q: An organization asks its employees to reframe the problems in a unique way and generate different approaches to the problems. Which of the following stages in the creative process would assist this? A. Verification B. Preparation C. Experimentation D. Illumination E. Incubation

Q: The first stage of the creative process is: A. divergent thinking. B. preparation. C. experimentation. D. illumination. E. intuition.

Q: Incubation and verification are the: A. stages of the creative process. B. elements of bounded rationality. C. elements of the MARS model. D. stages of team decision making. E. two steps in perceptual modeling.

Q: Establishing a preset level at which the decision is abandoned or reevaluated is recommended mainly to: A. minimize reliance on an implicit favorite. B. avoid relying on mental models to recognize problems or opportunities. C. minimize escalation of commitment. D. minimize problem identification. E. reduce the incidence of satisficing.

Q: Escalation of commitment can be minimized by ensuring that: A. there are ready-made alternatives to resolve the problem. B. those who make the decision are different from those who implement and evaluate it. C. the team leader has strong opinions about the preferred options for a problem. D. organizational goals are relatively ambiguous. E. negative information is screened out to protect the self-esteem of the decision makers.

Q: When decision makers choose to continue an existing course of action because it is the less painful option at the time, this is known as: A. prospect theory effect. B. sunk costs effect. C. self-justification effect. D. self-enhancement effect. E. satisficing.

Q: Prospect theory and closing costs are two reasons why people: A. engage in escalation of commitment. B. define problems in terms of preferred solutions. C. make non-programmed decisions rather than programmed decisions. D. demonstrate satisficing behaviors. E. encourage employee involvement.

Q: _____ is the tendency to experience stronger negative emotions when losing something of value than the positive emotions experienced when gaining something of equal value. A. Implicit favoritism B. Bounded rationality C. Intuition D. Nonprogrammed decision making E. Prospect theory effect

Q: After choosing among several computer server systems, the Director of Information Systems feels very positive about the final choice. However, some of this optimism is due to the fact that the Director forgot about few of the limitations of the chosen system and unconsciously downplays the importance of the positive features of the rejected systems. The Director of Information Systems is engaging in: A. escalation of commitment. B. rational maximization. C. rational choice thinking. D. confirmation bias. E. impulsive buying.

Q: Which of the following statements is true about scenario planning? A. It is unwittingly selective in the acquisition and use of evidence. B. It is the process of planning a solution based on employee preferences. C. It is a disciplined method for imagining possible futures. D. It is an act of reframing the problem in a unique way and generating different approaches to the issue. E. It is the act of calculating the conventionally accepted right answer to a logical problem.

Q: Intuition relies on programmed decision routines that speed up our response to pattern matches or mismatches. These programmed decision routines are referred to as: A. action scripts. B. illuminations. C. rational formulae. D. solution-focused problems. E. implicit favorites.

Q: Which of the following decision-making activities tends to make the most use of tacit knowledge? A. Intuition B. Decision support systems C. Escalation of commitment D. Data mining E. Intelligent systems

Q: The most accurate view of intuition is that it is: A. a trait that people acquire mainly through heredity. B. more likely to be found in men than women. C. acquired more quickly by people whose careers extend to several unrelated industries. D. the ability to know when an opportunity exists and select the best course of action without conscious reasoning. E. an unacceptable way of making decisions in an organizational setting.

Q: Which of the following ultimately energize us to select the preferred choice? A. Logic B. Emotions C. Rational logic D. Creativity E. Intuition

Q: Which of the following is NOT a reason people engage in satisficing rather than maximization? A. They lack the capacity and motivation to process a huge volume of information. B. They rely on sequential evaluation of new alternatives. C. Decisions with many alternatives can be cognitively and emotionally draining. D. Alternatives present themselves over time, not all at once. E. It allows them to choose the alternative with the highest payoff.

Q: Satisficing refers to: A. the tendency to choose an alternative that is good enough rather than the best. B. the feeling employees experience when they are not involved in a decision in which they would have made a valuable contribution. C. a desirable outcome of decision making when several employees participate in the decision process. D. the feeling employees experience when they make the right decision. E. the tendency for decision makers to evaluate alternatives sequentially rather than comparing them all at once.

Q: The Director of Nursing is looking throughout the hospital for a new format of a work schedule for nurses. She evaluates each schedule system as soon as she learns about it. Eventually, she finds a schedule that is "good enough" for her needs and ends her search even though there may be better schedules available that she hasn't yet learned about. The Director of Nursing is engaging in: A. escalation of commitment. B. satisficing. C. perceptual defense. D. post-decisional justification. E. open rationalization.

Q: The availability heuristic refers to the tendency: A. to choose an alternative that is good enough rather than the best. B. for people to influence an initial anchor point. C. to evaluate probabilities of events or objects by how closely it resembles another event. D. to estimate the probability of something occurring by how easily we can recall those events. E. for decision makers to evaluate alternatives sequentially rather than comparing them all at once.

Q: Decision makers tend to rely on their implicit favorite when they: A. select an appropriate decision style. B. evaluate decision alternatives sequentially. C. want to avoid escalation of commitment. D. want to make more creative decisions. E. have to make a selection from very limited alternatives.

Q: Which of the following is an observation from organizational behavior that contradicts the rational choice paradigm assumptions? A. Decision makers evaluate all alternatives simultaneously. B. Decision makers use factual information to choose alternatives. C. Decision makers choose the alternative with the highest payoff. D. Decision makers have limited information processing abilities. E. Decision makers use absolute standards to evaluate alternatives.

Q: Which of the following is one of the assumptions of the rational choice paradigm? A. Decision makers evaluate alternatives against an implicit favorite. B. Decision makers choose the alternative that is good enough. C. Decision makers have well-articulated goals. D. Decision makers evaluate alternatives sequentially. E. Decision makers process perceptually distorted information.

Q: The concept of bounded rationality holds that: A. our perception of a rational reality is bounded by nonrationality. B. decision makers process limited and imperfect information and therefore rarely select the best choice. C. decision makers have limited alternatives to make decisions. D. decision makers are bound to project images of themselves as rational thinkers. E. our realities are bounded by our own perceptions so that everyone's reality is different.

Q: What effect do mental models have on the decision-making process? A. They perpetuate assumptions that make it difficult to see new opportunities. B. They allow decision makers to obtain accurate information from the surroundings. C. They reduce the importance of developing alternative solutions to the problem. D. They allow decision makers to maximize the potential of their decision making. E. They help people to be more creative in decision making.

Q: Perceptual defense causes us to: A. defend the solutions we propose. B. defend those who agree with us when we identify a problem. C. defend the perception we have after making a decision. D. block out bad news or information that threatens our self-concept. E. justify our actions to defend our position.

Q: The tendency to define problems in terms of a preferred solution occurs because: A. it provides a comforting solution. B. decision makers prefer ambiguity rather than decisiveness. C. it avoids the escalation of commitment problem. D. it avoids problems of bounded rationality. E. it helps in minimizing the biases caused by mental models.

Q: During a meeting, senior executives of a consumer products company were addressing the problem of being late in detecting several consumer trends, such as the trend toward using see-through plastics in kitchenware. While trying to determine the source of this problem, one executive said: "The main problem here is that we need to find a better industrial design firm to design our products." Which of the following best describes the decision-making problem that this executive is exhibiting? A. The executive is engaging in escalation of commitment. B. The executive is being too creative. C. The executive is involved in participative decision making. D. The executive is engaging in groupthink. E. The executive is defining the problem in terms of a solution.

Q: One school of management thought states that organizational decisions and actions are influenced mainly by what attracts management's attention, rather than by the objective reality of the external or internal environment. Which of the following practices is closely associated with this argument? A. Rational choice paradigm B. Programmed decision making C. Perceptual defense D. Decisive leadership E. Stakeholder framing

Q: The purely rational model of decision making is rarely practiced in reality because it: A. ignores the fact that problems must be defined before alternatives are chosen. B. assumes that human beings make decisions based on their emotions and abilities. C. assumes that people are perfectly rational in their decision making. D. ignores the fact that people evaluate their decision after an alternative has been chosen and implemented. E. does not consider the problems associated with implementing each of the alternatives.

Q: Which of these is the final step in the rational choice decision making process? A. Developing a list of solutions B. Implementing the selected alternative C. Choosing the best alternative D. Evaluating decision outcomes E. Recognizing the opportunities

Q: A nonprogrammed decision is applicable in any: A. routine situation where the company has a ready-made solution. B. decision that does not relate directly to the employee's job description. C. nonroutine situation in which employees must search for alternative solutions. D. decision that is clearly within the employee's job description. E. decision that affects the employee's performance.

Q: The rational decision making model begins with: A. evaluating alternatives. B. identifying an opportunity. C. searching for alternatives. D. implementing the solution. E. searching for information about outcomes to each alternative.

Q: The rational choice paradigm selects the choice with the highest utility through the calculation of: A. subjective expected utility. B. selective expected utility. C. solution-focused utility. D. rational expected utility. E. rational selective utility.

Q: The view that people should and typically do use logic and all available information to choose the alternative with the highest value is known as: A. subjective expected utility maximization. B. the rational choice paradigm. C. bounded rationality. D. decision making. E. intuition.

Q: _____ is a conscious process of making choices among one or more alternatives with the intention of moving toward some desired state of affairs. A. Decision making B. Bounded rationality C. Divergent thinking D. Prospect theory E. Scenario planning

Q: High employee involvement would be difficult to achieve when conflict is likely among employees.

Q: The four outcomes of employee involvement are decision structure, source of decision knowledge, decision commitment, and risk of conflict.

Q: Employees are more committed to implementing a solution when they are involved in making the decision.

Q: Employee involvement potentially improves both the decision-making quality and the commitment of employees.

Q: A low level of employee involvement occurs when employees are individual asked for specific information but the problem is not described to them.

Q: In organizational settings, creativity usually occurs alone rather than with other people.

Q: A potentially useful creative practice is to list different dimensions of a system and the elements of each dimension, then think through the potential commercial usefulness of each combination.

Q: Morphological analysis is a test used to identify people with a creative personality.

Q: Creative ideas can emerge when asking people unfamiliar with the problem to explore the problem with you.

Q: People are most creative when management puts intense time pressures on them to complete tasks.

Q: Knowledge and experience can undermine creativity because they can lead to routinization of that knowledge.

Q: The ideas that form during the illumination stage of creativity need to be verified through logical evaluation and experimentation.

Q: The ideas that appear during the illumination stage of creativity are quickly forgotten unless documented.

Q: Divergent thinking refers to calculating the conventionally accepted "right answer" to a logical problem.

Q: Incubation is the stage of creativity in which the problem is simmering at the back of your mind while you are doing something else.

Q: The incubation stage of creativity is more effective when the decision maker sets aside all other activities and focuses attention on the issue or problem.

Q: Creativity is defined as reframing a problem in a unique way and generating different approaches to the issue.

Q: Involving several people in the evaluation of a decision weakens the decision evaluation process.

Q: Escalation of commitment is likely to occur when the perceived costs of terminating the project are high or unknown.

Q: The four main influences of escalation of commitment are self-justification effect, self-enhancement effect, prospect theory effect, and sunk costs effect.

Q: Escalation of commitment occurs when employees increase their support for a decision because most of their colleagues also support that decision.