Learning and Decision Making

Learning and Decision Making

Overview of Learning and Decision Making

  • Learning: Relatively permanent changes in an employee’s knowledge or skills attained from experience.

  • Importance of Learning for Employees:

    • Provides a toolbox for good decision-making.

    • Employees may not utilize all tools but benefit from a broader selection for various situations.

Types of Knowledge

Explicit Knowledge

  • Information-based knowledge.

  • Relatively easy to communicate.

  • Examples: manuals, technical skills, software, machine operation.

  • Considered “necessary” for performance.

  • Often a minor contributor to overall learning in practice.

Tacit Knowledge

  • Experience-based knowledge.

  • Difficult to communicate effectively.

  • Examples: social skills, insight, practical intelligence, intuition.

  • Often a significant contributor to learning, enhancing decision-making capabilities.

Understanding Employee Learning

Indicators of Learning

  • Observing repetitive and relatively permanent behaviors in employees is essential to gauge learning outcomes.

Decision Making

  • Defined as the process of generating and choosing from a set of alternatives to solve problems.

  • Increased knowledge and skills lead to more accurate and sound decisions.

Methods of Learning

1. Reinforcement

  • Also known as operant conditioning.

  • Involves observing the link between voluntary behavior and consequences that follow:

    • Engagement in desirable behavior leads to rewards.

    • Engagement in undesirable behavior leads to punishment.

Components of Operant Conditioning

  • Antecedent: Condition that precedes behavior (e.g., specific and difficult goals set by management).

  • Behavior: The action performed by the employee (e.g., meeting assigned goals).

  • Consequence: Result following behavior (e.g., employee receiving a bonus).

Contingencies of Reinforcement

  • Positive Reinforcement: Positive outcomes follow desirable behavior.

  • Negative Reinforcement: Removal of negative outcomes following desired behavior.

  • Punishment: Negative outcomes result from undesirable behavior.

  • Extinction: Removal of positive outcomes following undesirable behavior.

Practical Examples of Reinforcement

  1. Manager rewards completion of a task.

  2. Praise is stopped when consistent tardiness occurs.

  3. Removal of an unpleasant task upon good performance.

  4. Issuance of a warning for repeated missed deadlines.

  5. Exclusion from training for missed sessions, despite enjoyment in training.

Group Activity

  1. Choose two contingencies of reinforcement.

  2. Develop work-related examples for each.

  3. Discuss possible unintended consequences.

Common Reinforcement Forms Used by Managers

  • Consider examples of positive reinforcement and extinction.

Timing and Schedule of Reinforcement

  • Timing is crucial for behavior modification; new learning is best acquired under continuous reinforcement schedules.

2. Observation

  • Social Learning Theory:

    • Individuals learn by observing others (coworkers, supervisors).

  • Behavioral Modeling: Employees learn from observations:

    • Observe > Learn > Repeat behaviors.

Individual Differences in Learning

  • Recognizing that individuals prioritize different goals and activities affects their learning processes.

3. Goal Orientations

  • Learning Orientation: Emphasis on building competence rather than just demonstrating it.

  • Performance-Prove Orientation: Focus on demonstrating competence for positive perceptions.

  • Performance-Avoid Orientation: Avoiding negative judgments about competence.

Associations with Learning Outcomes

  • Learning Goal Orientation:

    • Linked to positive outcomes such as improved self-confidence and feedback-seeking.

  • Performance-Prove Orientation:

    • Mixed results in outcomes.

  • Performance-Avoid Orientation:

    • Associated with negative outcomes such as reduced learning and increased anxiety.

Methods of Decision Making

1. Programmed Decisions

  • Automatic decisions based on recognized situations; experience-based decision making.

2. Intuition

  • Defined as a gut feeling; quick, nonconscious judgments shaped by tacit knowledge, observation, and experience.

  • Effective primarily when the individual has high domain expertise.

Intuition in Crisis Situations

  • In urgent problems requiring immediate decisions:

    • Managers may appear incompetent if rushed decisions are made without adequate reasoning.

    • Clear communication of tasks and intentions to staff is critical for acceptance and understanding.

3. Nonprogrammed Decisions

  • When faced with new, complex, or unrecognized problems:

    • Utilize a rational decision-making model:

    • Involves thorough analysis of criteria, alternatives, and cost/benefit evaluations.

Decision-Making Problems

Limited Information

  • Bounded Rationality: Decision-makers cannot process all available information effectively.

  • Simplification: Filtering and reducing complexity for better understanding.

  • Satisficing: Selecting the first, acceptable alternative instead of the best one.

Faulty Perceptions

  • Selective Perception: Seeing the environment based on personal effects and expectations.

  • Projection Bias: Attributing one’s thoughts and attitudes onto others.

  • Social Identity Bias: Self-identification based on group affiliation influenced by social group membership.

  • Stereotype: Making blanket assumptions about others based on group membership.

Heuristics

  • These are mental shortcuts to ease decision making, leading to quick judgments based on readily available information (e.g., using a calculator for quick calculations).

Faulty Attributions

  • Fundamental Attribution Error: Judging behavior based on internal factors while ignoring external circumstances.

  • Self-serving Bias: Attributing personal failures to external factors and successes to internal factors.

Summary of Factors Influencing Learning and Decision Making

  • Reinforcement methods, observational learning, goal orientations, and knowledge types influence learning effectiveness.

  • Programs of decision-making (programmed and nonprogrammed) differ in dependability on information types and complexity.

Learning and Profitability

  • Learning is positively correlated with:

    • Task performance.

    • Organizational commitment (albeit weak).

    • Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and counterproductive work behavior (CWB) less positively correlated.