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Showing posts with the label decision making

Are You Buying Emotionally or Rationally?

Feelings and rationality have been something philosophers debated for centuries . Descartes separated emotion and reason as well as mind and body . The process of making purchasing decisions can be based on emotion , reason , or both depending on the situation in which we make decisions . From a marketing and consumer purchasing approach, emotion or reason are primed by an independent or interdependent self-construal. According to a study in the Journal of Consumer Research  those with independent self-construal promote reliance on feelings in judgments while interdependent self-construals promote greater reliance on reason (Jiewen & Change, 2015). Decision making is impacted by how we see ourselves in relation to others. To understand this idea fully it is necessary to comprehend what a self-construal is. Self-construal is the way in which we perceive ourselves in relation to others. Much of our belie

The Microfoundations of Solving Complex Business Problems

Solving problems is a natural part of business development. Every organizational will need to solve particular problems if they hope to overcome market challenges and economic environments. The complexity of today’s global business environment requires better decision making that ensures the best solutions are forthcoming to enhance opportunities. A study by Baer et. al (2013) delves into   a theory of the microfoundations of decisions that help to predict impediments to solution formation when complex and ill-structured problems present themselves. Problem formation has always been the fundamental stumbling block and main activity of strategic decision making (Quinn, 1980). Without solutions to problems organizations cannot move forward in their development and may be derailed by personalities, vantage points, bounded rationality, and poor decision-making process that take their toll on profitability.  Complex problems are more likely to be derailed by the microfoundation

What Military Leaders Can Teach Business Executives?

Leadership in tough situations requires one to dig deep to find values, meaning and strength at a more basic level. A paper by Jennings and Hannah discusses the concept of leadership identity formulation among those who experience some of the world’s most intense situations. They create a more concrete formulation of the idea of ethical leadership in the military even when the situation is tough and the right path is not easy to discern. The report focuses on the choice between moral versus legal aspirations. The ultimate aim of any military is to project and employ force to defend their people, rights of their citizens, interests and very core values of their people. When stressful situations occur individuals within units have multiple competing interests. They may engage in self-preservation, protection of their unit, protecting civilians, engage their personal values, or engage the unit’s values. Each creates different avenues and opportunities for action. How someone cho

Pick the Right People and Make More Money

By Dr Andree Swanson "If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don't have to manage them." — Jack Welch HR talent and acquisition people tend to place managers in three different categories: Top (executive), middle (middle management), and bottom (supervisory) (Kaiser, Craig, Overfield, & Yarborough, 2011, p. 84).   Top level managers have a long time span for service from 5 to 20+ years).   Their primary skills are conceptual in nature (Kaiser et al.). Conceptual thinking, according to Buffalo State College, is the "[a]bility to identify patterns or connections between situations that are not obviously related, and to identify key or underlying issues in complex situations." For an organization to be successful in a globally competitive and complex environment, organizations must hire managers with the intellectual ability to visualize what may not b