Intro to the Principles of Management

Chapter

  • 1

    Chapter 1

    This chapter will introduce readers to the course and explain the key points and themes of management.

    Estimated time: ~36 Minutes
  • 2

    Chapter 2

    Chapter 2 analyzes the characteristics of organizational structure and what factors into structuring businesses.

    Estimated time: ~56 Minutes
  • 3

    Chapter 3

    This chapter explains the importance of teamwork and motivation, and how to develop them within an organization.

    Estimated time: ~102 Minutes
  • 4

    Chapter 4

    This chapter explains the concept of business ethics, and the importance of ethics in organizational management.

    Estimated time: ~31 Minutes
  • 5

    Chapter 5

    This chapter discusses the role that competition plays in doing business, as well as the forces that create the competitive environment.

    Estimated time: ~63 Minutes
  • 6

    Chapter 6

    This chapter explains what kind of market structures exist and how they affect consumers and competitors.

    Estimated time: ~46 Minutes
  • 7

    Chapter 7

    This chapter provides readers with an understanding of different ways to analyze information in order to form an effective business strategy.

    Estimated time: ~21 Minutes
  • 8

    Chapter 8

    This chapter looks at some of the reasons and motivators behind managerial decision making, as well as the ways managers ultimately reach decisions.

    Estimated time: ~31 Minutes
- of 13

Concept

  • 1

    Concept 1

    This introduces readers to the concept of bounded rationality, a psychological look at how people make decisions.

    Estimated time: ~6 Minutes
  • 2

    Concept 2

    This concept looks at some of the brainstorming techniques managers use to reach decisions.

    Estimated time: ~3 Minutes
  • 3

    Concept 3

    This concept discusses how playing the role of devil's advocate is used to help spur critical thinking and creativity.

    Estimated time: ~0 Minutes
  • 4

    Concept 4

    This concept explains how ideas and questions are often framed to induce certain decisions.

    Estimated time: ~4 Minutes
  • 5

    Concept 5

    In this concept, Norwegian political scientist Johan P. Olsen explains the origins of the Garbage Can Model of decision making.

    Estimated time: ~5 Minutes
  • 6

    Concept 6

    This concept discusses the most dreaded result of group brainstorming, the phenomenon known as groupthink.

    Estimated time: ~4 Minutes
  • 7

    Concept 7

    This concept looks at the "illusion of control", a heuristical explanation that indicates people often overestimate their chances of making successful decisions.

    Estimated time: ~4 Minutes
  • Test

    Chapter 8 Test

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Concept 7: Illusion of Control

This concept looks at the "illusion of control", a heuristical explanation that indicates people often overestimate their chances of making successful decisions.

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From http://www.fsc.yorku.ca/york/istheory/wiki/index.php/Illusion_of_control (open source in a new window)
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The theory of the illusion of control (IOC) was first defined by Ellen Langer (1975) as an expectancy of a personal success probability that exceeds the objective probability of the outcome. This type of overconfidence is likely when an event that is at least partially determined by chance is characterized by factors that normally lead to enhanced outcomes under skill-based situations, such as choice, stimulus or response familiarity, competition, and passive or active involvement (Langer, 1975). These skill-related cues thus give rise to individuals' perceived control over an outcome, which in turn leads to an unrealistic subjective probability of success. While this effect was originally demonstrated with predominantly chance-driven events, the illusion of control can be even more pronounced in situations that have elements of both skill and chance, since individuals are even more apt to attribute success in the outcome due to skill factors.

Extensions to this theory have shown that factors other than skill-related cues may create an illusion of control. Outcome sequence (Langer and Roth, 1975), foreknowledge (Presson and Benassi, 1996), and the degree of correspondence between the normative solution and the encouraged solution of the problem frame (Kahai et al., 1998) also increase individuals' perceived control over a task's outcome, resulting in an unrealistic expectation of the probability of success.


While Langer's original theory proposed that either passive or active involvement could lead to an illusion of control, individuals may be even more prone to the illusion of control with an active, collaborative exercise. Thus, user confidence for decisions made with decision aids may be marked by overconfidence when the outcome is partially determined by chance (Kottemann et al., 1994).

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Concept 7: Illusion of Control