assignment 26

Chapter 8: Learning & Decision Making

Learning Goals

• What is learning, and how does it affect decision making?

• What types of knowledge can employees gain as they learn and build expertise? cracked

• What are the methods by which employees learn in organizations?

• What two methods can employees use to make decisions?

• What decision-making problems can prevent employees from translating their learning into accurate decisions?

• How does learning affect job performance and organizational commitment?

• What steps can organizations take to foster learning?

Learning and Decision Making

• Learning reflects relatively permanent changes in an employee’s knowledge or skill that result from experience. • The more employees learn, the more they bring to the table

when they come to work.

• Decision making refers to the process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem. • The more knowledge and skills employees possess, the more

likely they are to make accurate and sound decisions.

• Expertise refers to the knowledge and skills that distinguish experts from novices and less experienced people.

Discussion Questions

• What does the term “expert” mean to you?

• What exactly do experts do that novices don’t?

Types of Knowledge

• Explicit knowledge is the kind of information you are likely to think about when you picture someone sitting down at a desk to learn. • Relatively easily communicated.

• Tacit knowledge is what employees can typically learn only through experience. • Up to 90 percent of the knowledge contained in organizations occurs in tacit

form.

Characteristics of Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

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Methods of Learning

• We learn through reinforcement (rewards and punishment), observation, and experience.

• Reinforcement – The process whereby a behavior with desirable consequences comes to be repeated

• Operant conditioning says that we learn by observing the link between our voluntary behavior and the consequences that follow it.

Contingencies of Reinforcement

• There are four specific consequences typically used by organizations to modify employee behavior, known as the contingencies of reinforcement

Contingencies of Reinforcement

• Two contingencies used to increase desired behaviors: • Positive reinforcement occurs when a positive

outcome follows a desired behavior. • Most common type of reinforcement • Increased pay, promotion

• Negative reinforcement occurs when an unwanted outcome is removed following a desired behavior. • Perform a task to not get yelled at

Contingencies of Reinforcement, Cont’d

• Two contingencies used to decrease undesired behaviors: • Punishment occurs when an unwanted outcome follows an

unwanted behavior. • Suspension, firing

• Extinction occurs when there is the removal of a consequence following an unwanted behavior. • Stop laughing at off-color jokes

Positive reinforcement and extinction should be the most common forms of reinforcement used by managers to create learning among their employees.

Contingencies of Reinforcement, Cont’d F

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Schedules of Reinforcement

• Continuous reinforcement is the simplest schedule of reinforcement and happens when a specific consequence follows each and every occurrence of a desired behavior.

• Fixed interval schedule is where workers are rewarded after a certain amount of time, and the length of time between reinforcement periods stays the same.

• Variable interval schedules are designed to reinforce behavior at more random points in time.

Questions:

• The workers at Snack Time are always on their feet and do not take extra long breaks because their supervisor Mr. Dan pays surprise visits to the production department. This practice helps the firm exceed performance targets. Mr. Dan practices which of the following reinforcement schedules?

A. Fixed interval schedule

B. Variable interval schedule

C. Continuous schedule

D. Fixed ratio schedule

Learning Through Observation

• Social learning theory argues that people in organizations have the ability to learn through the observation of others.

• Behavioral modeling happens when employees observe the actions of others, learn from what they observe, and then repeat the observed behavior.

The Modeling Process F

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Goal Orientation

• Learning orientation - where building competence is deemed more important than demonstrating competence. • Enjoy working on new kinds of tasks, even if they fail during

their early experiences. • View failure in positive terms—as a means of increasing

knowledge and skills in the long run.

• Performance-prove orientation focus on demonstrating their competence so that others think favorably of them. • Performance-avoid orientation focus on

demonstrating competence so that others will not think poorly of them.

Decision Making

•Decision making refers to the process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem.

Methods of Decision Making

• Programmed decisions are decisions that become somewhat automatic because a person’s knowledge allows him or her to recognize and identify a situation and the course of action that needs to be taken.

Methods of Decision Making, Cont’d

• When a situation arises that is new, complex and not recognized, it calls for a nonprogrammed decision on the part of the employee. • As employees move up the corporate ladder, a larger

percentage of their decisions become less and less programmed.

• Rational decision-making model offers a step-by-step approach to making decisions that maximize outcomes by examining all available alternatives.

Programmed and Nonprogrammed Decisions

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Decision-Making Problems

• Limited Information • Bounded rationality is the notion that decision

makers simply do not have the ability or resources to process all available information and alternatives to make an optimal decision. • Satisficing results when decision makers select the

first acceptable alternative considered.

Decision-Making Problems, Cont’d

• Faulty Perceptions • Selective perception is the tendency for people to see

their environment only as it affects them and as it is consistent with their expectations.

• Faulty Perceptions, Cont’d • Projection bias is the belief that others think,

feel, and act the same way they do.

• Stereotype occurs when people make assumptions about others on the basis of their membership in a social group.

Decision-Making Biases

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Decision-Making Problems, Cont’d

• Escalation of commitment refers to the decision to continue to follow a failing course of action. • People have a tendency, when presented with a

series of decisions, to escalate their commitment to previous decisions, even in the face of obvious failures.

Why Do Some Employees Learn to Make Decisions Better than Others?

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Learning

• Learning does influence job performance. • It is moderately correlated with job performance.

• Learning is only weakly related to organizational commitment. • Having higher levels of job knowledge is

associated with slight increases in emotional attachment to the firm.

Effects of Learning on Performance and Commitment

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Application: Training

• Training represents a systematic effort by organizations to facilitate the learning of job-related knowledge and behavior. • Organizations spent more than $150 billion on

employee learning and development in 2014, or $1,208 per employee.

• Knowledge transfer is the transfer of knowledge from older, experienced workers to younger employees.

Knowledge Transfer

• Behavior modeling training ensures that employees have the ability to observe and learn from those in the company with significant amounts of tacit knowledge.

• Communities of practice are groups of employees who work together and learn from one another by collaborating over an extended period of time.

• Transfer of training occurs when the knowledge, skills, and behaviors used on the job are maintained by the learner once training ends and generalized to the workplace once the learner returns to the job. • Transfer of training can be fostered if organizations create a climate for

transfer —an environment that can support the use of new skills.

Takeaways

• Learning is a relatively permanent change in an employee’s knowledge or skill that results from experience. Decision making refers to the process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve a problem. Learning allows employees to make better decisions by making those decisions more quickly and by being able to generate a better set of alternatives. • Employees gain both explicit and tacit knowledge as

they build expertise. Explicit knowledge is easily communicated and available to everyone. Tacit knowledge, however, is something employees can only learn through experience.

Takeaways, Cont’d

• Employees learn new knowledge through reinforcement and observation of others. That learning also depends on whether the employees are learning-oriented or performance-oriented.

• Programmed decisions are decisions that become somewhat automatic because a person’s knowledge allows him or her to recognize and identify a situation and the course of action that needs to be taken. Many task-related decisions made by experts are programmed decisions. Nonprogrammed decisions are made when a problem is new, complex, or not recognized. Ideally, such decisions are made by following the steps in the rational decision-making model.

Takeaways, Cont’d

• Employees are less able to translate their learning into accurate decisions when they struggle with limited information, faulty perceptions, faulty attributions, and escalation of commitment.

• Learning has a moderate positive relationship with job performance and a weak positive relationship with organizational commitment.

• Through various forms of training, companies can give employees more knowledge and a wider array of experiences that they can use to make decisions.