Perceptual Errors, Attributions, And Biases: Important Factors In Managerial Decision-Making

Perception and Its Stages

Discuss about the Perceptual Errors-Attributions and Biases.

Perceptual errors, attributions, and biases are vital in the managerial decisions. The three traits determine the individual behaviors in the organization. For instance, perfect perception guides the employees towards interpreting whatever they hear or see in the workplace to make right decisions (Johnson, Blumstein, Fowler, and Haselton, 2013 p.474). Also, the traits determine how the employees conduct their obligations as well as act ethically in the organizations. However, in case there is a faulty perception of the organization errors may be detected and assumptions may be made. Therefore, perceptual errors, attributions, and biases should be well managed to disengage employees in ambiguous situations which may arise. Effective managers’ helps employees in managing the three elements hence they can create justifications for their approaches to acquire support when required (Boachie-Mensah and Seidu, 2012 p.73). Moreover, when evaluating perceptual errors, attributions, and biases, employees’ behaviors can be easily determined and may result in success or failure of the institution. This paper explores perceptual errors, attributions, and biases which are significant elements which must be considered in managerial decisions.

To start with, perception can be defined as the capability to hear, see, or individual awareness in regard to how they understand and perceive things. Basically, perception is a term which is considered in the universe in the cases where individuals seek to make sense in the context of other people and their lives (Kastanakis and Voyer, 2014 p.430). There are three steps which make a perception process. First, the step concerning selective attention. This step concern any time that an individual focus on their awareness or the individual experiences. Second, the organizations and arrangements which is a step that focuses on the individual mind as well as the mind organization on the basis of cluster sensation to gestalt. Third, the step involving distortion and errors. This step involves how people accurately determine judgments and interpersonal perception of other people. Moreover, perception is closely related to perception as it focuses on the sequential organization of objects as well as event’s stimuli hence it is considered during stimuli interpretation (Sun and Anderson, 2012 p.1001). Therefore, the outlined stages of perception differ and cannot be predicted as they vary from an individual to another based on how they change their thoughts.

Perceptual errors involve stereotyping or a situation where both positive and negative opinions are made in regard to a certain category of the group of persons. Usually, the perceptual errors are perceived as inaccurate beliefs or assumptions which apply to the generalizations made about other people. Perceptual errors occur due to the personalities, experiences, needs, and desires of other people. On the other hand, biases can be defined as the individual cause to feel or portray prejudice or inclination against other people or things. Moreover, biases have negative impacts at the workplace as they harbor the retention and recruiting efforts. Unconscious bias may result in skewing performance and talent reviews of employees at the workplace. Finally, attributions refer to the actions which regard things that occur due to individual actions. Also, attributions can refer to the ascribed trait, quality, or perfect unique powers embraced by an individual. Therefore, attributions guide individuals towards explaining the causes of events or behaviors.

Perceptual Errors, Biases, and Attributions

Attribution theory is a type of motivational theory which explores and explain how average people construct an event’s meaning in regard to individual intentions to realize the cause through individual knowledge of the surrounding. Attribution theory was chosen as it makes sense concerning people and how they perceive the world. Moreover, the theory examines the causes and effects inferences which communicates about individual behaviors (Haselton and Galperin, 2012 p.55). Therefore, Heider indicates that people should understand the transient actions through attribution to recognize the environmental characteristics. The significant motive behind attributions is to accomplish cognitive control of the entire surrounding through giving explanations and understanding the effects of some behaviors as well as occurrences in the environment. In simple words, attribution theory explains how people perceive things socially and uses the information to determine relevant explanations for events. It also explores the information collected and explains how causal judgment relates to managerial decisions.

In outlining the historical development of the attribution theory, it is evident that Heider perceived that individuals are simple psychologists who seek to communicate sense in the social universe. Also, Heider believed that individuals see the causes and effects of relationships even if there does not exist. Heider did not do much in the development of attribution theory as he emphasized some themes which other philosophers developed. However, there was two significant information that was emphasized during the development of the attribution theory (Thomas and Peterson, 2017 p.10). To start with, the point of internal attribution. This point was concerned with the assigning process in regard to behavior causes connected to the internal characteristic instead of external forces. Therefore, internal attribution seeks to explain the behaviors of other people such as the personality characteristic. On the other hand, Heider emphasized on external attribution which assigns causes of behaviors to certain situations or events which occur externally such as situational features.

Weiner also developed the attribution theory which was initially developed by Fritz Heider in 1958. Bernard Weiner developed attribution theory outlining that individual attributions explain their successes and failures based on the efforts they put in the future. However, Weiner did not explore every aspect developed by Heider in the attribution theory. Moreover, Weiner’s paradigm is informative in the case of student education. The theory also assumes that students can be impacted by personal attributes such as previous experiences as well as environmental aspects which include school surrounding (Popovi?, Hackney, Coelho and Jakli?, 2012 p.730). Also, Weiner pointed that cognitive and affective examination impacts behavior in the future if similar situations occur. Finally, Weiner outlined three casual perspectives such as locus, stability, and controllability.

Attribution Theory

Attribution theory matters at the workplace as the perceived behavior causes may have an impact on the employees as well as managers in decision-making and actions. For example, managers are obliged to monitor the employees’ performance and make relevant judgments (Mata, 2012 p.531). In regard to attribution theory, a manager may attribute the performance of an employee in case fewer efforts are detected, and if other results are negative hence may result in termination of the employee from the workplace. Also, employee motivation can be impacted by attribution theory. It happens in the case where employees realize the cause of their performance which exceeds their abilities. At some point, employees are reluctant in attempting tasks and as a result, they lose motivation to work (Bazerman and Moore, 2012 p.40). However, employees who realize the cause of their success have the motivation to work. Therefore, attributions should be understood at the workplace as they have a strong impact on the managerial effectiveness as well as employee performance. Attribution theory ensures consistency at the workplace. Through attribution theory, individual understand distinctiveness, consistency, as well as consensus at the workplace. For example, Nancy who is a manager assigns employees to work to engage in custom development sales of a certain client. Therefore, throughout the project, Nancy identifies problems in Jim’s work. For this reason, Nancy monitors consistency and after reviewing Jim’s previous performance appraisals realized that he did not have a record of poor performance. For such a case, attribution theory can be applied to explain how Nancy understood the causes of individual behaviors. However, managers may act badly in case the attributions appear invalid.

Managerial decision making refers to the process where people make decisions, opinions, or position after making considerations. Managerial decision making refers to the procedure of choosing several products, choices, or ideas (Frese and Keith, 2015 p.630). Managerial decision making is a complicated procedure which requires managers to identify every factor of a business before making any decisions. All business operations and the organization body are governed by logical and effective management decisions.  Any person who is not aware of the concept of managerial decision should be curious from the beginning to employ in the modern trends in the organization (Dane and Pratt, 2007 p.34). For instance, managerial decision making can be applied in globalization, e-business, and entrepreneurship. Various questions may arise such as the meaning of decision making which results in managerial decision making. Effective managerial decision-making contributes to positive results while ineffective managerial decision-making causes losses in the organization. Managerial decision-making process involves several steps. First, purpose identification where a problem is identified. Second, information gathering followed by judgment principles alternatives. Also, analyzing choices is also considered in managerial decision-making as it guides in problem-solving. Moreover the steps of evaluating and selecting best alternatives of the decision-making process. Finally, the decision is executed and results evaluated. Therefore, managers should employ the decision-making process professionally to facilitate effectiveness in the organization.

Application of Attribution Theory in the Workplace

Attribution is beneficial to managerial decision-making through various ways. To start with, attributions explores the situations which determine individual which results due to the internal and external causes. Also, attributions facilitate high-quality information which seeks to establish networks for good relationships based on knowledge which exists. Moreover, operational attribution benefits organizations as they ensure there is an accurate reflection in the decision-making process (Shroff, Verdi and Yu, 2013 p.760). This type of attribution provides organizations with the ability to monitor online conversations in regard to the institution. Managerial decision-making helps in optimizing marketing programs through a project-based attribution. It allows effective advertising and helps institution identify the best technique for advertising mix in the future. Moreover, through attributions managers create causal inferences which determine the perception of managerial decision-making. The causal inferences are considered in the marketing situations where related work is examined by managers (Eiser and van der Pligt, 2015 p.100). Generally, through attributions organizations can easily evaluate cognitive, satisfaction, affective belonging, and loyalty in managerial decision-making. Clearly, the employee attributions guides’ managers towards determining effective human resource practices which bring positive impacts on the organization.

It is recommended that employees should adopt human resource practices which attract positive attitudes as well as behaviors in the organization. Therefore, in regard to human resource practices, five human resources attribution dimensions are proposed. The employee attributions for human resource practices should be connected to satisfaction and commitment. Human resource practices should allow institutions to boost performance. Moreover, human resource practices propel desired impacts on the employee attributions and behaviors. Effective human resource strategies facilitate productivity in an institution (Harvey, Madison, Martinko, Crook and Crook, 2014 p.130). Therefore, human resource practices should consider a significant vision as they cannot succeed in a vacuum. It implies that the human resource practices must align with the organization’s strategic vision. Therefore, it is important if the human resource managers review the organization vision to ensure it matches the employees’ attributions (Meyer, 2014 p.10). Also, the human resource practices should consider the organizational demographics. Human resource managers should examine employees’ demographics to close the gap which exists between the strategies, visions, and current skills. Finally, human resource management should ensure there is a transfer of knowledge to facilitate effectiveness in managerial decision-making. Knowledge transfer allows organizational continuity for human resource management practices which facilitate effectiveness and productivity. Also, plans must be outlined to ensure knowledge is designed for the elder employees to achieve performance in the institution.

Importance of Managerial Decision-Making

Conclusion

This paper focuses on perceptual errors, attributions, and biases which are vital in the managerial decisions. Therefore, perceptual errors, attributions, and biases should be well-managed to discourage employees from participating in ambiguous actions. Perception is viewed as the individual management based on how they perceive or understand things. Perceptual errors refer to stereotyping where positive and negative opinions which are made in regard to a certain group of people. On the other biases, causes prejudice against other people. Finally, attributions refer to the perfect unique powers embraced by an individual. Attribution theory is also explored as it explains how average people construct an event’s meaning in regard to individual intentions to realize the cause through individual knowledge of the surrounding. In addition, an attribution which is beneficial to managerial decision-making is discussed broadly in this paper. Finally, this paper offers recommendations to human resource management in regard to adoption of attribution in the organization.

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