Deck 7: Decision Making and Creativity

Question 1

Intuition is independent of the programmed decision routines that speed up our response to pattern matches or mismatches.

Answer 1

True
Explanation: Intuition also relies on action scripts -programmed decision routines that speed up our response to pattern matches or mismatches.

Question 2

When making important decisions,we "listen in" on our emotions to guide our preference among the decision alternatives.

Answer 2

True
Explanation: Marketing experts have found that we listen in on our emotions to gain guidance when making choices. This process is similar to having a temporary improvement in emotional intelligence.

Question 3

Intuition allows us to draw on our tacit knowledge to guide our decision preferences.

Answer 3

True
Explanation: Intuition involves rapidly comparing our observations with deeply held patterns learned through experience. These templates represent tacit knowledge that has been implicitly acquired over time.

Question 4

Preconceived mental models formed by our cognitive structure help us make better and accurate decisions.

Question 5

Research suggests that decision makers do not evaluate several alternatives when they find an opportunity.

Question 6

Rational choice decision process recommends choosing the alternative with a moderate subjective expected utility.

Question 7

One of the reasons people use satisficing rather than maximization when making decisions is that it takes more information processing capacity than people possess or are willing to use to choose the best alternative.

Question 8

According to bounded rationality theory,people make the best decisions when their perceptions are "bounded" or framed by past experience.

Question 9

Nonprogrammed decisions require all steps in the decision model because the problems are new,complex,or ill-defined.

Question 10

The decision-making process is more effective when problems are defined in terms of their solutions.

Question 11

The rational choice paradigm assumes that decision makers have limited information-processing capabilities and engage in a limited search for alternatives.

Question 12

One reason why the problem identification stage is imperfect is that various stakeholders try to frame the decision maker's view of the situation.

Question 13

Decision making is a nonconscious process of moving toward a desirable state of affairs.

Question 14

Intuition is based on mental templates or models representing tacit knowledge about a situation.

Question 15

When in a positive mood,people pay more attention to details and follow a nonprogrammed decision routine.

Question 16

The emerging emotional view of decision making states that people form preferences toward alternatives as soon as they receive information about those alternatives.

Question 17

Decision makers have a need to reduce uncertainty,so they tend to engage in solution-focused problem identification.

Question 18

Decision makers typically look at alternatives sequentially and compare each alternative with an implicit favorite.

Question 19

Subjective expected utility refers to how much the selected alternative benefits or satisfies the decision maker.

Question 20

The last step in the rational decision-making model is to evaluate the decision outcomes.

Question 21

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.

Question 22

Employees tend to be less creative in organizations that punish failure.

Question 23

Scenario planning is a systematic process of thinking about alternative futures and what the organization should do to anticipate and react to those environments.

Question 24

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

Question 25

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

Question 26

Knowledge and experience can undermine creativity because it can lead to routinization of that knowledge.

Question 27

Creative people are more embarrassed when they make mistakes.

Question 28

Post-decisional justification causes decision makers to forget what decision they made.

Question 29

Involving several people in the evaluation weakens the decision evaluation process.

Question 30

The ideas that form during the insight stage of creativity need to be verified through conscious evaluation and experimentation.

Question 31

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

Question 32

The prospect theory effect motivates us to avoid losses.

Question 33

Post-decisional justification gives people an excessively optimistic evaluation of their decisions,until they receive very clear and undeniable information to the contrary.

Question 34

Creative people have practical intelligence and not cognitive intelligence.

Question 35

Creative people tend to have a high need for affiliation.

Question 36

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

Question 37

Task significance and autonomy are important conditions for creativity in organizations.

Question 38

Creativity tends to suffer during times of downsizing and corporate restructuring.

Question 39

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

Question 40

The ideas that appear during the insight stage of creativity are quickly forgotten unless documented.

Question 41

Employee involvement tends to weaken synergy in the decision-making process.

Question 42

The higher the level of employee involvement,the more influence people have over the decision process.

Question 43

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.

Question 44

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

Question 45

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.

Question 46

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.

Question 47

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

Question 48

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.

Question 49

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

Question 50

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

Question 51

Which of these represent 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

Question 52

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.

Question 53

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

Question 54

_____ 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

Question 55

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.

Question 56

Cross-pollination is recommended to encourage creativity in organizations.

Question 57

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

Question 58

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 efficient and logical in their information processing.
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.

Question 59

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 problems.
D) it avoids problems of bounded rationality.
E) it helps in minimizing the biases caused by mental models.

Question 60

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

Question 61

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.

Question 62

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.

Question 63

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.

Question 64

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.

Question 65

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.

Question 66

Which of the following ultimately energizes us to select the preferred choice?

A) Logic
B) Emotions
C) Rational logic
D) Creativity
E) Intuition

Question 67

The first stage of the creative process is:

A) divergent thinking.
B) preparation.
C) experimentation.
D) insight.
E) intuition.

Question 68

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

Question 69

_____ 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 favorite
B) Bounded rationality
C) Intuition
D) Nonprogrammed decision making
E) Prospect theory effect

Question 70

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.

Question 71

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.

Question 72

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) Have to make a selection from very limited alternatives.

Question 73

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.

Question 74

Which of the following statements is true about scenario planning?

A) It is the unwitting selectivity 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.

Question 75

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.

Question 76

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

Question 77

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 the degree to which they remember other events or objects.
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.

Question 78

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) insights.
C) rational formulae.
D) solution-focused problems.
E) implicit favorites.

Question 79

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) Insight
E) Incubation

Question 80

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) unacceptable way of making decisions in an organizational setup.