Transcript This is the title of this presentation

Grades
• Exam– 40%
– Exam 1: Motivation; Indv. Differences; Managing boss
– Exam 2: Social Networks; Decision Making; Culture
– Multiple choice and/or short-essay questions
– Articles; Cases; Synopses.
• Quizzes—20%
- Three quizzes
• Book– 20%
• Managementor Exercises– 20%
• Speakers– 23,28,30
Page 1
Simple but Powerful Advice
• Give views in advance, in private.
• Pick who will speak first at random (US Supreme Court Justices start with
junior-most member)
• Encourage and reward disagreement.
Delusional Optimism
•Due to both cognitive biases and
organizational pressures:
- exaggerate own talents; downplay luck
- self-serving attributions: in annual reports
- scenario planning tends to reward most
optimistic appraisals.
- anchoring
- competitor neglect.
- pessimism often interpreted as disloyalty
How to Take The Outside View
• Select a reference class:
– choose a class that is broad enough to be statistically meaningful but narrow enough to
be truly comparable to project at hand-- movies in same genres, similar actors
• Assess the distribution of outcomes:
– Identify the average and extremes in the refer- ence-class projects’ outcomes--the studio
executive’s reference-class movies sold $40 million in tickets on average. But 10% sold
less than $2 mil- lion and 5% sold more than $120 million.
• Predict, intuitively:
– where you fall in the distribution– executive predicted $95 million
• Estimate reliability of your prediction
– correlation between forecast and actual outcome expressed as a coefficient ranging from
0 to 1.
• Correct the intuitive estimate for unreliability
– less reliable the prediction, more needs to be adjusted towards the mean.
Culture Slides
Given the power of social influence…
(e.g., 70% of seminary students failed to help man in need when told to hurry
to a waiting class; when another person in a restroom, 90 percent washed their
hands; otherwise, less than 20 percent did so)
“I don’t know what a cult is and what those bleary-eyed kids selling poppy
really do, but I’m probably that deeply committed to the IBM company”
20-year veteran IBM employee quoted in WSJ
Pepsi’s culture of competition; 3M’s culture of innovation; IBM’s culture of
service
Page 5
Steven Hsieh on Zappos/Culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQJIJSoA96A
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Culture’s Consequences…
- Influences efficacy of strategy through alignment
- Enhances control
- Increased commitment from employees
- A sense of distinctive identity and a hard to replicate basis of distinctive
competence
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Page 9
"RESULTS—that's all that
counts, period.“ Support groups
are akin to “victim’s groups,”
which the best women avoid
Page 10
Binders full of women…
Gender remains an issue…
– France approved a new law in 2010 that would force companies to
increase the number of women serving on boards of directors by
40% by 2016
– Norway forced companies to increase female board representation to
40%: businesses howled.
• Potential cost: lost experienced people (but all male boards
perform very well (LVMH, French luxury goods company, mostly
female customers; but almost entirely male board)
• Potential gain: social justice; more creative?; less groupthink?
• Where to find qualified women with experience in core business?
Why Are Women Underrepresented at Top?
-
Biology?
Stereotypes and stereotype threats?
Lack of qualified women?
Barriers to opportunities, especially of the informal kind?
Lack of institutional support?
Organizational Culture?
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What is Organizational Culture?
• A social control system? A shared pattern of belief and expectations:
the power of peers: control without the sense of external, binding
constraint
• A normative order? The culture of “constructive confrontation at Intel.
The central, cherished values, enshrined in prototypic people, stories,
symbols (Pepsi’s culture of competition; 3M’s culture of innovation; IBM’s
culture of service)
• The intended culture vs. the emergent culture
Page 13
How is culture shaped?
- Participation: when choice is volitional, explicit and public, it enhances
commitment (systems to involve people: advisory boards; etc.)
- Symbolic action: Repeat; put money where mouth is; symbols and
ceremonies (Jerry Sanders pushing innovation at AMD: revenues
measured as Asparagus)
- Listen
- Reward systems and policies
Page 14
The Art of Virtual Persusaion
The Legal Perspective on Diversity and Discrimination
• Discrimination law:
– Seeks to determine whether an individual has been inequitably
treated because of the demographic category to which s/he belongs
• Diversity law:
- Broader concept dealing with the overall climate of an organization
and its degree of heterogeneity.
An evaluation of diversity is therefore likely to be more
subjective than assessments of discrimination
The Business Rationale for
Diversity
• It makes legal and economic sense: Nondiscrimination is the law:
– Coca Cola (race discrimination)
– Home Depot (gender discrimination)
– Texaco (race discrimination)
– US Govt. (in 2000, $508 million case; women who were refused
employment with US Information Agency)
– Walmart (gender discrimination: class action lawsuit on behalf of 1.6
million employees: statistical analysis showed Walmart paid less to
women and gave them fewer promotions: 70% employees female:
only 30% are managers)
• Little choice: Changing demographics (Blacks: 10%; Hispanics: 18%;
Asian: 20%)
• Customers diverse, then employees should be diverse
• Enhanced group and organizational performance? Diversity=
richer ideas and learning; employee attraction and retention
Diversity Paradigms
• Discrimination and fairness: US Army
• Access and Legitimacy: U.S. investment bank expanding to India
hires Indians
• Learning and effectiveness: Law firm where minority attorneys
brought in minority business; but also expanded the kind of work that
the company as a whole took on (i.e., changed business strategy)
Women and Glass Ceiling
• Are people less worried about appearing sexist than racist?
• Catalyst (2006): At nation’s largest 500 companies:
– women are 50% of managers, but only hold 15.4% of senior exec. jobs, down
from 16.4% in 2005
– women received 48% of law degrees, but account for only 17.9% of partners
– in 2007, the median pay for women was .82 percent of that for men.
• Outperform: go beyond expectations
• Develop style with which men are comfortable (Marlyn Monroe or Iron
Maiden)
• Seek out challenging assignments
• Find mentors
The Psychology of Tokenism
• Visibility (tokens capture
disproportionate share of
attention)
• Polarization
(exaggeration of
differences)
• Assimilation (Tokens
attributes are distorted to
fit preexisting
generalizations)
The Significance of Numbers for
Social Life
• Simmel (1950)
• Kanter (1977): relative proportions; not a matter of innate biological
differences, or even of culture; it’s a structural issue of relative
proportions.
• Tokens: Treated as “representatives of a category, as symbols rather
than as individuals.”
Friendship Network at an Ivy League
University in 1988
Skewed, Tilted, and Balanced
Groups
• Skewed groups (100:0 to 85:15):
difficult for tokens to generate
alliances or gain power.
• Tilted (65:35):minority members
can become potential allies; can
affect group culture; become
individuals differentiated from
each other and from the majority.
• Balanced (60:40 to 50:50):
culture and interaction reflect
balance; majority and minority
turn into potential subgroups;
outcomes depend upon other
structural factors than mere
group membership.
Spencer & Owens
Discrimination and Fairness Perspective
(We are all the same; differences do not matter)
S&O’s Discrimination and Fairness
perspective
Approach
- Diversity as moral imperative
- Eliminate discrimination: treat everyone the
same
- Progress assessed by examining
recruitment and retention goals.
• Access and Legitimacy perspective
Approach
- Use diversity to connect with market
segments
- Progress measured by achieving
recruitment and retention goals in
boundary or visible positions
Results
Results
• Pressures to assimilate
• Differences undiscussable; conflict
suppressed
• People feel alienated and devalued
• Performance undermine
- Experience regarded as limited or
specialized
- Career paths limited; people feel exploited
- Differences neither analyzed nor leveraged
Integration and Learning Approach
Approach
- Cultural differences as resource for learning (different perspectives and experiences)
- Use differences to enhance work processes and core work
- Progress measured by power traditionally underrepresented groups have to change the
organization and its work.
Result
- Differences embraced, discussed, disputed, evaluated
- People feel valued and respected
- Cultural competencies learned and shared
- Work enhanced by insights, knowledge, skills grounded in peoples’ experiences.
Eight Preconditions for Making Shift to Integration-andLearning
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Leadership must understand that diverse workforce will embody different
perspectives and approaches to work, and must value variety of opinion and
insight.
Leadership must recognize both learning opportunities and the challenges that
the expression of different perspectives presents.
The organizational culture must create expectation of high standards of
performance for everyone.
Organizational culture must stimulate personal development.
Organizational culture must encourage openness.
Organizational culture must make workers feel valued.
Organization must have a well articulated and widely understood mission.
Organization must have a relatively egalitarian, non bureaucratic structure
Deloitte and Touche
• 1991– Heavily recruiting women since 1980; 50% of new hires women
but only 8% of candidates for partner were women;
• “We prided ourselves on our open, collegial work environment
• 1992– Deloitte’s Initiative for Retention and Advancement of Women
– Launched by CEO Tim Cook: Product is our talent
– Worried about it seeming like Affirmative Action
• Six Steps
1. Made Senior Management Front and Center (not an HR thing)
2. Make an airtight business case (Where will new partners come
from?)
3. Let the world watch you (press conference; external advisory
council; article in WSJ)
4. Begin with dialogue (don’t assume you know views)
5. Flexible but quantitative accounting (asked for numbers: are top
women receiving proportionate share of plum assignments?
6. Promote work-life balance
Page 28
END DISCUSSION OF CULTURE HERE
Page 29
How to Avoid Dysfunctional Group Decision-Making?
• Groups: Bigger and more diverse= better?
• Problems in groups:
– Individual effects: Anchoring; Availability; Confirmation; Sunk-cost
– Social Effects: Don’t want to disturb cohesion; assumption that group
is smarter; desire to seem fair and reasonable; give in to high-status
people
• How overcome?
Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant
• GE plant in NY, 60
miles from Manhattan
• Designed to produce
540-820 megawatts
• Initial estimated cost:
$65 million
• Final cost: $6billion
• After 11 years (’73’84), never opened!
• Construction flaws
• Labor unions
• Public concerns over
safety
• Escalation of
commitment, or
failed persistence?
Blowing Up
Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant
• GE plant in NY, 60
miles from Manhattan
• Designed to produce
540-820 megawatts
• Initial estimated cost:
$65 million
• Final cost: $6billion
• After 11 years (’73’84), never opened!
• Construction flaws
• Labor unions
• Public concerns over
safety
• Escalation of
commitment, or
failed persistence?
Escalation of Commitment: The
Flip Side of Persistence
Reducing Escalation of
Commitment
• Set minimum targets for performance, and
force decision makers to compare against
these targets
•Stimulate opposition using “devil’s advocacy”
•Rotate managers through roles
•Reduce ego-involvement
•Provide and study more frequent feedback
about project completion and costs
•Reduce risk and penalties for “failure”
•Make explicit the costs of persistence
The Asch Effect
Standard Line Card
Comparison Lines
Card
1
2
3
Page 36
Asch Effect:
What are the implications of the Asch effect for
managers?
– Strong social effects on what we see and do.
•
How to organize meeting and debates:
–
–
Find ways of getting people to express their views and opinions in ways that prevent
those views being swayed by perceived group opinions.
Emphasize that you are not interested in “yes men.”
– The importance of people who don’t get along with others–
Socrates was turned into an outcast… but should not have
been.
– Crucially: Once one person dissents, the likelihood of others
speaking up goes up dramatically.
Milgram: Obedience to authority (1974)
• Ordinary people, simply doing their
jobs, and without any particular
hostility on their part, can become
agents in a terrible destructive
process. Moreover, even when the
destructive effects of their work
become patently clear, and they are
asked to carry out actions
incompatible with fundamental
standards of morality, relatively few
people have the resources needed to
resist authority
• http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q
=Milgram+Shock+Experiment&Form=
VQFRVP#view=detail&mid=E49E9EE0
93CEC55FE564E49E9EE093CEC55FE5
64
Page 38
• What percentage of ordinary, lawabiding, Yale students would deliver
the maximum 450 volt shock?
< 10% < 50% > 50% > 60%
• "the essence of obedience consists in the fact that a person comes to
view themselves as the instrument for carrying out another person's
wishes, and they therefore no longer see themselves as responsible for
their actions. Once this critical shift of viewpoint has occurred in the
person, all of the essential features of obedience follow"
Groupthink
• Groupthink: When you feel a high pressure to conform and agree and
are unwilling to realistically view alternatives
• What are some of the reasons or factors that promote groupthink?
• What can be done to prevent groupthink?
Page 40
Figure 10-6
Symptoms of Groupthink and Decision Making
Symptoms of Groupthink
Invulnerability
Inherent morality
Rationalization
Stereotyped views of opposition
Self-censorship
Illusion of
unanimity
 Peer pressure
 Mindguards






Decision-making Defects
1) Few alternatives
2) No reexamination of
preferred alternatives
3) No reexamination of
rejected alternatives
4) Rejection of expert
opinions
5) Selective bias of new
information
6) No contingency plans
Groupthink: Implications for Managers
• Assign to each member the role of critical evaluator–
this role involves playing “Devil’s Advocate” by actively
voicing doubt and objections.
• Use subgroups and bring in outside experts for
exploring the same policy decisions.
• Use different groups with different leaders to explore
the same question.
Page 42
Groupthink: Implications for Managers
• Assign to each member the role of critical evaluator–
this role involves playing “Devil’s Advocate” by actively
voicing doubt and objections.
• Use subgroups and bring in outside experts for
exploring the same policy decisions.
• Use different groups with different leaders to explore
the same question.
Groupthink: Implications for Managers
• Assign to each member the role of critical evaluator–
this role involves playing “Devil’s Advocate” by actively
voicing doubt and objections.
• Use subgroups and bring in outside experts for
exploring the same policy decisions.
• Use different groups with different leaders to explore
the same question.
Reducing Escalation of
Commitment
• Set minimum targets for performance, and
force decision makers to compare against
these targets
•Stimulate opposition using “devil’s advocacy”
•Rotate managers through roles
•Reduce ego-involvement
•Provide and study more frequent feedback
about project completion and costs
•Reduce risk and penalties for “failure”
•Make explicit the costs of persistence