OB intent concepts

OB intent concepts are those concepts that are related to perception and decision-making researched in organizational behavior studies. The concepts below are taken from Organizational Behavior by Robbins and Judge (17th edition); Septem Artes Administrativi served as the primary source of illustrations.

Perception

• Perception. A process by which individuals organize and interpret their sensory impressions in order to give meaning to their environment.

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  Enterprise discovery

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  Observation

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  Johari Window

Attribution and biases in perception

• Attribution theory. An attempt to determine whether an individual's behavior is internally or externally caused.
• Fundamental attribution error. The tendency to underestimate the influence of external factors and overestimate the influence of internal factors when making judgments about the behavior of others.
• Self-serving bias. The tendency for individuals to attribute their own successes to internal factors and put the blame for failures on external factors.
• Selective perception. The tendency to selectively interpret what one sees on the basis of one's interests, background, experience, and attitudes.
• Halo effect. The tendency to draw a general impression about an individual on the basis of a single characteristic.
• Contrast effect. Evaluation of a person's characteristics that is affected by comparisons with other people recently encountered who rank higher or lower on the same characteristics.
• Stereotyping. Judging someone on the basis of our perception of the group to which that person belongs.
• Stereotype threat. The degree to which we internally agree with the generally negative stereotyped perceptions of our groups.
• Self-fulfilling prophecy. A situation in which a person inaccurately perceives a second person, and the resulting expectations cause the second person to behave in ways consistent with the original perception.

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  Attribution theory

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  Attribution factor

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  Perception shortcut

Decision making

• Decision. A choice made from among two or more alternatives.
• Problem. A discrepancy between the current state of affairs and some desired state.

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  Decision-making approach

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  Problem, solution, and project

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  Business analysis vs project management vs systems engineering

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  Decisional discretion

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  Solution requirement

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  Requirement lifecycle

Rational decision-making

• Rationale. A reasoning characterized by making consistent, value-maximizing choices within specified constraints.
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  Seven-step decision-making
  Rational decision-making model. A decision-making model that describes how individuals should behave in order to maximize some outcome.

Errors in decision-making

• Bounded rationality. A process of making decisions by constructing simplified models that extract the essential features from problems without capturing all their complexity.
• Intuitive decision making. An unconscious process created out of distilled experience.
• Anchoring bias. A tendency to fixate on initial information, from which one then falls to adequately adjust for subsequent information.
• Confirmation bias. The tendency to seek out information that reaffirms past choices and to discount information that contradicts past judgments.
• Availability bias. The tendency for people to base their judgments on information that is readily available to them.
• Escalation of commitment. An increased commitment to a previous decision in spite of negative information.
• Randomness error. The tendency of individuals to believe that they can predict the outcomes of random events.
• Risk aversion. The tendency to prefer a sure gain of a moderate amount over a riskier outcome, even if the riskier outcome might have a higher expected payoff.
• Hindsight bias. The tendency to believe falsely, after an outcome of an event is actually known, that one would have accurately predicted that outcome.

Ethics in decision-making

• Utilitarianism. A system in which decisions are made to provide the greatest good for the greatest number.
• Whistle-blower. An individual who reports unethical practices by their employer to outsiders.
• Behavioral ethics. Analyzing how people actually behave when confronted with ethical dilemmas.

Creative decision-making

• Creativity. The ability to produce novel and useful ideas.
• Three-stage model of creativity. The proposition that creativity involves three stages: causes (creative potential and creative environment), creative behavior, and creative outcomes (innovation).
• Problem formulation. The stage of creative behavior that involves identifying a problem or opportunity requiring a solution that is as yet unknown.
• Information gathering. The stage of creative behavior when possible solutions to a problem incubate in an individual's mind.
• Idea generation. The process of creative behavior that involves developing possible solutions to a problem from relevant information and knowledge.
• Idea evaluation. The process of creative behavior involving the evaluation of potential solutions to problems to identify the best one.

See also

• OB introductory concepts
• OB personality concepts
• OB motivation concepts
• OB social concepts
• OB team concepts
• OB communication concepts
• OB conflict concepts
• OB leadership concepts
• OB culture concepts
• OB HR concepts
• OB change concepts