摘要:

AbstractRetrospective thinking occurs whenever one remembers something from the past, but one can also think retrospectively about hypothetical future events, by imagining that the event has already transpired and then working backward in the mind from the future toward the present. Designers, artists, planners, and other creative individuals utilize retrospective thinking when they mentally envision the object they wish to create and then thinkabout how it might be constructed. Some theorists and some previous research have suggested that forward and backward thinking are different cognitive processes, but there has been little investigation on the nature of these differences. This article examines the literature and describes a laboratory study designed to investigate retrospective thinking as a technique for increased idea generation. Subjects (n=64) were professional planners and managers with an average business experience of over 20 years. In a planning task, significantly more ideas were generated in the retrospective thinking mode than in the prospective mode, but the ideas were not found to be of greater quality. Evidence emerged that a subset of subjects were better able to make use of the retrospective technique, suggesting that selection along with training may be appropriate for the technique's mosteffective use.

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00799.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractThis paper reports the identification and ranking of major manufacturing issues that American manufacturing managers and academics must focus on and resolve in the 1990s to be competitive on a global basis. Vice‐presidents of manufacturing from over 75 companies across the United States were asked in a Delphi study to rank the key strategic and tactical issues facing American manufacturing in the next three to five years. Based on three rounds of a Delphi study, quality management, manufacturing strategy, and process technology emerged as the top ranked strategic issues. The top ranked tactical issues were quality control, manufacturing planning and control systems, and work force supervision. These issues were valid across diverse industry groups, since the industrial and educational background of the respondents was shown to have no impact on the final consensus rankings and opinions reported in this paper. Factor analysis of the responses by the panel revealed that certain issues tend to be consistently viewed together, and were interpreted accordingly to provide insights into the ranking of issues. Apart from building a consensus among experts on key manufacturing issues of present and future importance, this study can also be helpful for setting future academic research and pedagogical priorities for the field of production and operations managemen

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00800.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractEmpirical investigations of the effects of group decision support systems (GDSS) accord relatively little attention to the role of attitudes developed by groups toward the GDSS. This study draws upon the theory of social influence to examine the role played by group attitudes in mediating the impact of GDSS designs on group decision‐making performance. We found that, in addition to capabilities of GDSS designs, group attitudes toward GDSS were influential in affecting group decision‐making performance. The managerial implications of the study are: (1) effective GDSS designs for supporting groups in equivocal decision‐making contexts should include structures for communication and consensus support and (2) attempts should be made to enhance user attitudes toward the GDSS through design features of the GDSS, training, and facilitation of positive social influences within the group. The study also provides encouraging evidence about the value of social theories, such as the social influence model and the adaptive structuration theory, in investigating GDSS effects. Further, this study illustrates the value of the partial least squares (PLS) analysis method for testing holistic structural models of GDSS ef

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00801.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractResearch suggests that two methods of introducing dissent, the dialectic inquiry (DI) and devil's advocate (DA) methods, show promise for increasing the cognitive complexity of decision makers. We investigated the joint effects of formalized dissent and group cognitive complexity by manipulating the formalized dissent method (DI or DA) used by 25 interacting groups engaged in a complex, ill‐structured planning task. Participants were classified as either high or low cognitive complexity and assigned to stratified groups with members of homogeneous complexity. Results indicated that: (1) DA groups produced higher quality assumptions but took longer to generate plans than did DI groups, (2) high complexity groups generated more recommendations relative to low complexity groups, and (3) DA groups with low complexity members produced lower quality recommendations and participated less equally in decision making than did the other groups. We conclude by discussing the implications of the results for formalized dissent, cognitive complexity, and assessing managerial performanc

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00802.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractIt is a commonly accepted belief in both the axiomatic and noncooperative game literatures that negotiators' risk preferences affect bargaining outcomes [28] [33]. However, there is little systematic empirical evidence to support this conclusion and virtually nothing on the moderating effect of one negotiator's risk preference on the other negotiator in a dyad. Further, bargaining models are typically based on Subjective Expected Utility theory, which provides no scope for incorporating the decision maker's tolerance for ambiguity.An experiment was conducted to test specific hypotheses on the effect of risk preference and tolerance for ambiguity on negotiator effectiveness. The risk preference of the negotiators was experimentally induced while their tolerance for ambiguity was measured. The results indicate that negotiator effectiveness increases as the negotiator's preference for risk increases, though this increase is mitigated by the risk preference of the dyadic partner. Further, when the negotiators in a dyad are matched on risk preference, the negotiator with a greater tolerance for ambiguity is more effective. However, when the negotiators are not matched on risk preference, their attitude towards ambiguity moderates the effect of risk preference. These results suggest that bargaining models need to include both risk preference and tolerance for ambiguity to expand their descriptive power.

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00803.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractThis study examines the role of subordinate participation in the effectiveness of audit hours budget decisions in accounting firms. The study compares decisions influenced by organizational factors (such as organizational policies or the preferences of the superior) to decisions that conform to the Vroom‐Jago (VJ) model. Our results indicate that actual level of participation used in budget decisions appears to be based primarily on perceived preferences of superiors and participation styles available under the circumstancesof the individual audit. However, results also indicate that decisions consistent with the Vroom‐Jago model are characterized by higher decision quality and increased subordinatedevelopment. Since managers are apparently reluctant to use decision styles that conflictwith organizational factors, accounting firms may wish to gather information regarding the attributes of the decision context and use the VJ model to establish their available decision styles and determine the preferences of superiors. Doing so has the advantage of considering decision‐specific attributes while enhancing the probability of manager compliance with a desired decision

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00804.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractAlignment between organizational critical success factors (CSFs) and competencies is widely believed to improve performance. This study examines the performance implications of alignment between CSFs and one source of competence, the organization's information technology (IT) capability. The effects of three antecedent factors–environmental uncertainty, integration, and IT management sophistication–are also examined.This paper uses survey data from 244 large academic institutions, along with some secondary data. Following the profile deviation approach to measure alignment, the academic institutions are divided into three clusters based on their CSFs: the academic comprehensives, the reputed giants, and the small educators. The ideal profile of IT capability is next developed for each cluster in terms of four dimensions: information retrieval, electronic communication, computing facilities for students, and computer‐aided education. Alignment is then computed for each institution as the proximity of its IT capability profile from the ideal IT capability profile for the cluster to which it belongs.The results suggest that alignment facilitates both perceived IT success and organizational performance. Moreover, sophisticated IT management facilitates both alignment and perceived IT success, environmental uncertainty facilitates perceived IT success but not alignment, and integration facilitates neither alignment nor perceived IT su

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00805.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractCharacterization of unacceptable solutions of linear programming methods for linear discriminant problems have been studied by many researchers. This note shows that a recent correction was not a correction but a tightening of prior results.

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00806.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

AbstractA major problem of LP discriminant analysis is the validity of the solution. This note shows that to comprehend the effectiveness of the solution, conditions for unacceptable solutions need to be tightly characterized.

ISSN:0011-7315    

DOI:10.1111/j.1540-5915.1994.tb00807.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1994

数据来源: WILEY