Exam 2 COM 105 3/19/13 12:43 PM
Chapter 5-9
CHAPTER 5
Decision Leadership in groups
Ways groups make decisions:
1. Consensus
Consensus: uncontested support for a decision by all members involved in
process
Unanimous (everyone agrees upon it) consensus (jury)
o Benefit: little to no conflict in the implementation process
o Challenge is that it takes a very long time to reach absolute
consensus. Recall the conflicts you have experienced in group
projects
Majority consensus (natural resource conflicts or politics)
False consensus: when groups are silenced from pressure to not
contest a decision
2. Majority rule
Process of voting for or against the various alternatives
Followed by almost all political bodies
Principle benefits:
o Equal voice (one person- one vote)
Facilitates moving decisions forward (“give it an up or
down” vote)
Principal drawback
o The process does not encourage innovation
Consensus forces people to work together to find
solutions which address all concerns
3. Minority Rule
Occurs when a small group within a group make the decision
There are two types:
o Minority rule in decision : when a small group decides for the`
group
o Minority veto : when a small group effectively stops a decision
from being made
Often to maintain the status quo by blockading a
discussion for change
Often this is accomplished through generalizations and
assessment of alternatives based upon shifting criteria
4. Expert opinion
Decisions are driven by technical or specialized knowledge in a particular
area
Principal benefit: most technically sound option is chosen
Principal drawbacks
o Problems are defined in a narrowly technical way and other
voices/ interests are systematically shut out
o Expert opinion decisions are NOT democratic
5. Authority Rule
Occurs when the person primarily responsible for organizational
management and possessing decision authority chooses among available
options
Principal benefits
o Efficiency (democracy is slow and unified command is fast)
o Responsibility for decision clearly lies with a person
Principal drawback: person making decision is likely NOT the most
technically knowledgeable
o Ex: us president and congress are ultimately responsible for
decisions concerning natural disasters, complex technology
choices and economic poly; yet lots of people have a more
technical qualifications than they do
Leadership Attributes
What Leadership Does:
Helps people make sense or understand something in a particular way.
Makes sense of circumstances and gets people to see them in alternative
(hopefully, better) ways.
In sum: Leadership is _____________.
This involves:
1 – understanding various leadership styles
2 – organizational vision , mission structure and image
Organizational Leadership Styles:
Black and mouton model ^
Leadership Concerns:
Concern for task: degree of concern for the function of the organization
Ex: getting the morning paper printed and delivered, filling a shoe
order out the door on time
In extremes: this person is an authoritarian manager with little
focus on shared vision
Concern for People: Degree of concern for people that organization is
fulfilling
Examples: boss who wants to friend employees
Leadership Style:
Impoverished: indifferent to both people and organizational mission
Going through the motions but not really committed to organization,
its future, the development of its people or resources
Country club: focused mostly on people dynamics and making employees/
followers feel good about work at the cost of productivity. Want everyone to
be happy
Authoritarian: leadership may perform well on technical and strategic
accomplishments but most often at the cost of people and relationships.
Sweatshop
Team leader or democratic : ongoing balance of task and people
concerns. Tends to work with people and manage a collaborative
process.
We must adapt leadership style to fit with followership and context
characteristics
Impoverished: indifferent to both people and organizational mission. You
aren’t helping anyone
what is the locus of leadership?
o Locus: the intersection follower characteristics, situation
characteristics and leadership characteristics
Superstar leader
Adapting for Islamic cultures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=BNwpL3z6wZU&feature=related
Adapting for Indigenous cultures in America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=ts8JXuMN0Q4
Leadership Mission and Vision:
The tools of Innovative leadership:
Envisioned Future
Convictions
Mission
Integration of Mission and Structure
Stakeholder Management
Leadership Mission and Vision
Map of Innovative Leadership:
External leadership and internal leadership should have an arrow running
back and fourth in a circle between each other
Envisioned Future:
A Clearly Envisioned Future:
A vivid description of what you see in the future for your team in five, ten or
more years in the future.
Visionary Leadership involves
Describing your IDEAL workplace (social movement, political
structure, etc)
Thinking beyond what is take-for-granted or assumed today
Cultivating support (shared vision) among leaders and followers
Willingness to resist and experience resistance
A Clearly Envisioned Future:
Ex: Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream speech”
Future Vision
Organizational Mission
External Leadership
Public Image
Image Campaigns
Internal Leadership
Organizational Structure & Culture
Strategic Objectives
Convictions
Convictions:
Convictions are a commitment or certainty (not necessarily total!) to
principled action.
Doing what you feel is right.
Doing now what you see as leading to a different and better future
state.
Cultivating a shared commitment among key players
Conviction: Behavior
Continuous Learning: Actively engage View work and life as an ongoing
"learning program", and then we can continue to learn from almost
everything in life.
Integrity: Matching statements and behaviors? Doing what is right.
Organizational Mission
Organizational Mission:
Mission states, in 1-2 sentences, why your company (or group, team, social
movement, et cetera) exists.
Vision is the overall picture of where we are headed
Conviction is a commitment to principled action getting us to vision
Purpose or mission is a more concrete description of who we are
and what we are doing
Also known as the mission statement (?)
Mission-Slogan-Strategic Objectives:
Mission: short description of why we exist (our purpose) -- Why we exist
Slogan: public messages to represent organizational mission to public – Who
we are
Strategic Objectives: specific action items (things we do) to accomplish and
fulfill our mission. - What we are doing
Mission:
Benefits of Strong Mission:
Guides strategic Planning
Clarifies decision making
(Should!) establish priorities and work practices
Boeing Vision Statement:
The Boeing Vision is: People working together as a global enterprise for
aerospace leadership. How will we get there?
Run healthy core businesses
Leverage our strengths into new products and services
Open new frontiers
In order to realize our vision, we consider where we are today and where we
would like to be tomorrow. There are certain business imperatives on which
Boeing places a very strong emphasis.
Detailed customer knowledge and focus that understand, anticipate
and respond to customer needs.
Large-scale systems integration that continually develops and
advances technical excellence.
A lean enterprise characterized by efficiency, supplier management,
short cycle times, high quality and low transaction costs.
Aribus Vision Statement:
Airbus is a high-performance environment. But performance isn’t only
about what you achieve: it’s also about how you achieve it.
That’s why we have ‘theAirbusway’. A set of guiding principles that
underpin a fully integrated company where all people share common
values, behaviors and ways of working.
All Airbus employees strive to live ‘theAirbusway’. But this does not
mean that everyone should be exactly the same. Far from it. We
encourage individuality. We embrace diversity. We want people to
bring their own style and contribute to the richness of our organization.
Drawn from more than 80 different nationalities, Airbus employees
have drive, dynamism and creativity, plus an ability to transcend
geographical and professional boundaries to work together on cutting-
edge projects.
Airbus is proof that great things happen when individuals from
different backgrounds and with different skill sets co-operate to tackle
and overcome the most challenging of obstacles.
Setting Strategic Objectives:
Conceivable
We need to perceive that the vision is possible
Achievable
We need to see how the conceivable vision can be accomplished
Measurable
We need measurable outcomes to tell if we are getting closer to the
vision
Significant
Controllable
We need to know what we do and do not control and know that we
control enough to accomplish vision
Challenging
Overall vision should push us but we also need to see progress
toward end goal
Conflict:
What is interpersonal Conflict?
Conflict occurs when people differ in:
Perspective
Interests
Values
Beliefs
Conflict is an expected part of life yet effective management of conflict is
complex and can involve specialized training and a lot of experience
Destructive Conflict
What is it?
Focused on winning argument
Shows lack of respect for others
Emphasizes People over Problem
Negatively expresses emotion
Wastes time
Produces poor decisions
Results:
Feelings of anger, frustration
Getting Even
Parties not having needs met
Decreased self confidence
Incomplete tasks
Decreased team performance
E.g. anger and raised voices
Constructive Conflict:
What is it?
Emphasizes task completion and problem solving
Emphasizes relationships
o Keeps people and problems separate
Listen first, talk second
Set out objectives
Explore options together
Leads to:
Win-win solutions
Open and honest communication
Needs of both parties being met
Resolution of conflict
Improved team performance
E.g. remaining calm in angry conflicts
Cliché: “Two heads are better than one”
Caveat: True IF they are collaborating not clashing
65% of performance problems result from strained relationships.
It doesn’t have to be this way!
Conflict Grid:
Styles of Conflict:
Competing style
Concerned only or primarily for one’s own needs and is willing to
engage others only to the degree they serve self interests
Avoiding style
Simply wants to be left alone and is not interested in either their
own or other’s interests
Accommodating style
Willing to sacrifice one’s own interests for the interests of others
Collaborating style
Has high concern for both one’s own interest and the interests of
others
Compromise style
Sees the need to operate as a middle-ground on all levels: a
genuine interest in competing and cooperating for both one’s own
and others’ interests
Chapter 6
Successful Meetings
Preparation and Follow through
Agenda:
Criteria for meeting or not meeting
Preparation
Wrap Up
Follow-through
This meeting was pointless!
Rules to decide about meeting or not meeting
Do not hold a meeting if….
The meeting is for simple information transfer and can be
disseminated through written memoranda or other one-way
medium
The leader/boss is not willing to actually incorporate the feedback
participants provide
Member absences will undermine the objective of the meeting
Do hold a meeting
There is a genuine need and benefit for meeting
The ‘decision’ has truly not been made
Participant input will actually impact the decision
Preparation
1st rule: What is the purpose of the meeting?
Every meeting should produce decision and action plans
What is the ‘history of the future?’
Learning from the pasts’ experiences, results etc. and figuring out
what worked and what didn’t in order to move forward with a vision
Planning future actions based on past mistakes
Figure out where you will be in the future, and action plans to get
there (back scheduling)
What is ‘armchair’ testing and under what circumstances do you use it? (look
it up)
The tendency of wanted everyone to participate in everything
Too many people in the room stifles creativity
Wrap up
Avoid the endless meaning syndrome
Solution?
o Set a time frame
How about adapting?
The end of the meeting should lead to people performing their action steps
outside the meeting
To do this it is necessary to establish who is doing what at the end
of the meeting
Meeting success is like if we establish plan for the next one (What’s on the
next piece?)
Follow-through:
Recorder needs to quickly summarize meeting in a one page to document
the key discussion areas, decisions, and action steps.
Make sure assignments are completed by agreed-upon deadlines.
Ideally, meeting follow-through should couple seamlessly into the
preparation stage for next meeting.
CHAPTER 7
Managing organizational structure:
Managing organizational communication
Avon case: A managers Challenge:
CEO experiencing failing global sales
Problem: Global expansion= too munch autonomy
AVON’s global organizational hierarchy exploded
o 7 levels to 15 levels of managers increased in a decade
Solution: Solve the crisis
o Restructure Avon’s organizational hierarchy
o Lay off thousands of global managers
o Used expert managers to examine functional activities
What they found: duplication of marketing efforts in
other countries was source of high costs
Organizational structure:
Organizational Architecture: combination of organizational structure, culture,
control system and human resource management that determine the use of
organizational resources.
Organizational Structure: A formal system of task and job reporting
relationships that determines how employees use resources and achieve
organizational goals.
Organizational Design: the process of using organizational structure and
culture to fulfill organizational mission
Challenges: Create an architecture that
Motivates managers and employees to work hard and develop
supportive job practices
Coordinate the actions of employees, groups, functions and
divisions to ensure overall organization is efficient and effective
What is the best organizational design?
There is no one best way to design an organization: design reflects
each organization’s specific situation
FOUR factors are important determinants of the type of
organizational structure:
o The nature of the organizational environment
o Type of strategy the organization pursues
o Technology the organization uses
o Characteristics of the organization’s human resources
Factors Affecting Organizational Structure:
Organizational Structure and Environment:
Organizational environment= turbulence and change
= the factors ‘external’ to and impacting organizational functioning
Political economic
Socio-cultural
Environmental
National/local celebrations
Weather
Act….
Organizational structure:
Traditional theory: mostly views org environment as a non-issue because
focus was/is placed on internal management of the machine
System theory: is especially interested in connection between internal and
external processes
Ex: foot and mouth disease
Organizational design must fit org environment. Examples:
You must be able to move as quickly as your environment does (be
adaptable!)
Bureaucracies work well in stable environments: ex food and
automobile manufacturing plans where market demands changed
slowly over time
Matrixes work well in project based organizations: ex consulting or
training firms: driven by client demand
Networks work well is emergent and grassroots contexts where org
mission and function are intentionally responsive to member
practices: think local community garden, environmental
organization, community food program or digitally-based
organization
Organizational Structure: Strategy
Strategy: the way different units are coordinated in accomplishing
organizational mission
Centralized strategy : means org decisions are made by a central
unit and other units must follow those procedures. This would
accompanied by rigid bureaucracy
Differentiation strategy : for example, allow units to deviate from
central products or process. This would be accompanied by some
sort of adaptive structure like a matrix
Org structure: technology
Technical knowledge, skills and machines that enables org to fulfill its
missions: distribution of goods and services
Task Variability = the number of new or unexpected problems that a
person or function experiences in performing tasks
Task Analyzability = the degree to which programmed solutions can
be put in place to solve/manage these problems
Which industries or sectors tend to run into low versus high variability
problems?
Organizational structure: human resources:
Human resources: the management of work tasks and focus of employees
Think about the difference of a forewomen watching closely over
the actions of temporary employees in a factors setting versus a lab
technician working largely unsupervised
High skill area : decentralized and autonomy from human resource
management. Low skill area= centralized and dependent of human
resource management
Lows skill area : centralized and dependent on human resource
management
Grouping tasks into jobs:
Job design: process by which managers decide how to divide tasks into
specific jobs
Ex: McDonalds managers and the division of labor, tasks related to
chiefs and tasks related to giving food to the customer
Job simplification: process of reducing the number of tasks that each worker
performs
Can reduce efficiency and workers can become demotivated and
unhappy= performing at a low level
Job enlargement: increasing the number of different tasks in a given job by
changing the division of labor
Increasing the range of tasks performing by a worker will reduce
boredom (at subway they make the food and serve it)
Job enrichment: increasing the degree of responsibility a worker has over his
or her job
Empowering workers to experiment to find new ways to do the job
Encouraging workers to develop new skills
Allow workers to respond to unexpected situations
Allow workers to monitor and measure their own performance
Job Characteristics Model:
5 characteristics that determine job motivation:
Skill variety
Task
Task
Five Job characteristics affect an employee’s motivation because they affect
three critical psychological states. If employees feel their work is meaningful
they will be more motivated (Hackman and Oldham)
Types of organizational structure:
Functional Structure : is driven by the principal functions of an
organization to complete is mission
o Each functional areas includes more specific task department:
Human resources includes payroll and benefits
Planning includes credit services and marketing
Functional areas, business college
Public relations
*add figure 10.3 for pier 1 imports
Befits of functional structure
o Learning and specialization from working closely with people
with similar skill sets
o Easier and more precise supervision
o Easier monitoring and more responsive changes in the
environments of those function areas
Negatives
Less effective as organization expands
Narrow focus on management of departments and less attention on
‘grand mission’ of organization
Divisional structure: Organizes task areas/ units/ departments by
specialization, market or geography
Creates smaller, more manageable and responsive units that focus
on a particular product line, problem, areas and so forth
Most managers of large organizations choose a divisional structure
to create business units
*insert figure 10.4 product market and geographic structure
Product structure: each product line or business is handled by a self-
contained divisions
Benefits of Product Structure:
Allows functions managers to focus on one product line
Division heads/ leads become more expert in their particular
industry or market niche
Division heads are freed from micro-managing and maintain an
organization-wide view o activities and mission
Negatives of Product Structure
Creates an additional layer of management – and there could be
issues of mission associated with the division.
Geographic Structure:
_______ Structure: in which each region of a country or area of the world is
served by a self-contained division
Department stores use geographic structure because needs of retail
customers differ by region
o Global ___________ structure: managers locate different
divisions in each of the world regions where the organization
operates
o Global ___________ structure: each product division, not the
country and regional managers, takes responsibility for
deciding where to manufacture its products and how to
market them in countries worldwide
Market Structure:
Market Structure: _______
Lets managers be responsive to the needs of their customers
(flexibility in decision making and response to customers)
Types of Organizational Structure:
Matrix Structure à functional employees and tasks being organized
simultaneously into (a) functional areas, and (b) product (or other) division.
Functions: allow them to learn from one another and become more
skilled and productive
Product teams: members of different functions work together to
develop a specific product
o Each person reports to two manager: (team members known
as two-boss employees)
Functional boss: who assigns individuals to a team and
evaluates their performance from a functional
perspective
Boss of the product team: evaluates performance on the
team
Types of organizational structure:
Matrix organization function and product team combined
Functional employees and tasks being organized simultaneously into
functions areas and product (or other) division
Functions: allows them to learn from one another and become more
skilled and productive
Product team: members of different functions work together to
develop a specific product
o Each person reports to two managers (team members known
as two boss employees)
Functional boss: who assigns individual to a team and
evaluates their performance from a functional
perspective
Boss of the product team: evaluates performance on the
team
Product team structure:
Product team structure: in which employees are permanently assigned to a
cross-functional team and report only to the product team manager or to one
of his or her direct subordinates
Cross-functional team: ____________________________________________
Organizational Structure: Allocating Authority:
Hierarchy of Authority: (_________________) organizations chain of
command, specifying the relative authority of each manager
___________: the number of subordinates who report directly to a
manager
Tallness/flatness of Hierarchy: can be literally counted from top-bottom
When organization grows its hierarchy of authority lengthens= taller
Tall organizational: _________ levels of authority relative to company
size
Flat organizational:__________levels relative to company size
When organizations become taller:_______________________________
Chain of command: Choosing who is on your team
Chain of Command at “The office”
Organizational Structure:
Organizational Culture : shared set of beliefs, expectations, values, and
norms that influence how members of an organization work together
Internalized by employees/members
Values identify (explicitly or implicitly) what is / in not good (shared
standards that members use to evaluate)
Norms prescribe behavior (prescribe shared beliefs, attitudes, and
behaviors). Ideally helps company achieve values
o Over time members of a company learn from one another
how to perceive and interpret various events that happen in
the work setting
Types of Organizational Structure:
Organizational Culture, Where does it come from?
Organizational culture shaped by the interaction of four main factors:
The personal and professional characteristics of people within org
Organizational ethics
Nature of the employment relationship
Design of its organizational structure
Org Members: companies (intentionally) attract people with certain values
and norms. Put them together and there is an additive effect. When
organizations members become too similar over time they lose their ability
to adapt to changes in the environment
Organizational Ethics: the moral values, beliefs, and rules that establish
the appropriate way for an organization and its members to deal with each
other and with people outside the organization. Ethical values become an
important part of an organizations structure
Employment relationship and human resource practices impacts org
culture (seasonal, temporary, full time. High/low turn-over. Career/job
minded. Promotion from within or hiring ‘best in field’)
Org structure determines who talks to whom à org culture. Tall versus
short org’s à different org cultures
How managers work to influence these four factors determines whether an
organization’s culture is strong and adaptive or is inert and difficult to
change
Organizational culture:
Org culture: shared set of beliefs, expectations, values, and norms that
influence how members of organization work together
Internatlized by employees/j members
Values identify (explicitly or implicitly) what is/ in not good (shared
standards that members use to evaluate)
Norms prescribe behavior (prescribe shared beliefs, attitudes, and
behaviors) ideally helps company achieve values
o Over time memebers of a company learn from one another
how to perceive and interpret various events that happen in
the works setting
Org culture, where dies it come from?
Organizational culture shaped by the interaction of four main factors (norms
based on the organization)
The personal and professional character
Org members:
Organizational ethics
Employment relationship
Org structure
Strong/ weak cultures
Adaptive cultures are organizational who’s employees build momentum to
grow and change as needed to achieve goals
Basically you stay with the same company because you grow with the
company
Inert cultures are org’s who’s values and norms fail to motivate
Short-term employment according org needs, minimal investment in
employees. Performance is not clearly tied to reward -> social/task
loafing
Three building blocks of organizational culture on YouTube… im too drunk for
this
Consistency between what you do and what you say
Behavior
Symbols
Systems: the process you put to make a difference
Symbols and systems
CHAPTER 8
5 Simple Steps to Build a Winning Corporate Culture:
Winning culture v:
Defined by simple words (easy to explain and understand)
Leader’s words are aligned with actions
Emphasizes three areas
Serving the customer
Growing the business
Developing employees
Losing culture:
Confusing and complex
Places customer needs behind those of the company
Emphasizes personal gain over team achievement
Enron: (1985-2001)
Based in Huston, Texas
Industry- energy, commodities, and services
Culture:
Maximize share value
Aggressive partnership hiding debt
Supporting the myth of its own invulnerability
Arrogant
5 steps to create/redefine corporate culture:
1. Define 3-4 guiding principles that define who you are as an organization
2. Use the principles to guide every business discussion and decision
Words are meaningless unless they spur new behavior
Use guiding principles to guide discussion and decisions
3. Build the principles into all your people performance and management
systems
Make sure that your people and performance management systems
measure rewards behaviors consistent with guiding principles
4. Create a 2-3 day leadership development experience that reinforces the
behavior and values consistent with the principles, and insist all senior
leaders attend.
You need to constantly reinforce words with action
Create an experience based leadership development program that
reinforces the values and behaviors consistent with guiding
principles
5. Expect resistance, bust stay the course with passion and patience
Expect some cynicism at first
CHAPTER 9
The Collaborative Organizations: How to make employee networks really
work
The Leading Question:
How can companies build more collaborative and innovative organizations?
Executives should analyze ________________________to discover how
high-performing individuals and teams connect
Networks should be designed to optimize
_______________________________, distance, and technical specialty
Network analysis can show where__________________________slows
decision making
DID WE GO OVER THIS POWERPOINT??
CHAPTER 10
Risk and Crisis Communication
Environmental hazards/risks we face:
Snow
Ice
Water quality
Food diseases
Chemicals in the food
GMO’s
Storm water
Risk and Perceived Risk:
Storm-water's damage to Puget Sound huge, report says2
Every year, Puget Sound suffers an oil spill equal to more than half an Exxon
Valdez. It just happens drop by drop.
By Warren Cornwall
Seattle Times environment reporter
Every year, Puget Sound suffers an oil spill equal to more than half an Exxon
Valdez. It just happens drop by drop.
Storm-water from roads, parking lots and elsewhere carries between 6.3
million and 8 million gallons of petroleum into the Sound every year,
according to a report issued Friday by the state Department of Ecology. The
1989 Valdez accident in Alaska dumped 11 million gallons.
And the flow into Puget Sound dwarfs the amount of oil that comes from
accidental spills, which add up to 270,000 to 340,000 gallons each year.
The findings of the new report underscore a long-standing problem of
stormwater pollution as a push to clean up Puget Sound gets under way. It
also shows the difficulty of corralling contamination that comes from the
region's pavement and storm drains, instead of pipes from a handful of
factories.
There is a different between hazard and our assessment of hazard
The Hazard-Outrage Model:
Risk Case= Hazard + outrage
Hazard:
The actual event future,
Future, eminent or already occurred
Low to catastrophic
Outrage:
Emotions and behaviors of audience
Perceptions of hazard
Range from apathy to rage
Risk / advocacy Communication:
Audience is uninterested/ inattentive
Challenging, advocacy communications because there is a problem but no
one is paying attention
Must assess what audience already cares about and use this to persuade
toward outcome
Ex: pre-storm warnings such as Hurricane Katrina
High risk low outrage… not showing up to class on Fridays
Stake holder Relations:
Audience is Attentive and Engaged
Easiest communication situation
Must remain as transparent and honest as possible
Collaborative / consensus building
Group interaction and management
Ex: Water resource management, natural resource planning
processes
Outrage management:
Audience is very engaged and often negatively and likely at you!
Most challenging communication context – NO trust of you or your motives
but believe their situation is dire
Listen and perhaps apologize if that enables more realistic perception
Ex: Small oil spill coinciding with Exxon Valdex
Crisis communication (high hazard/ high concern)
Audience very Engaged and attentive
Reaction to actual event
Outrage ≠ Anger; Outrage = Concern
Communicator needs to listen to concerns and show empathy AND
demonstrate leadership in managing incident and moving forward
o Ex: any natural disaster, airline crash, act of terrorism,
financial meltdown
Risk Communication:
Risk communication is
Spin
Brainwashing
A genuine effort to enable lay people to make informing decision
about something
Risk & Perceptions:
If ‘risk communication’ is intended to inform, we need to understand what
people already know and think so that information is offered in frames
corresponding with preexisting perceptions
Perception of Radon:
Step 1: Rank order the following risks in terms of ‘deaths per year.’
Drowning
Drunk Driving
Home Fire
Falling in Home
Radon
Radon
Drunk driving
Falls in home
Drowning
Home fire
If risk is _________, information is a tool.
Reasons we estimate incorrectly:
ANCHORING BIAS:
An ‘anchor’ is information about related risks. Direct estimates were
influenced by the anchor given.
Subjects told that 50,000 people die from auto accidents produced
estimates two to five times higher than those produced by subjects
told that 1000 die from electrocution.
People seem impacted by how questions are asked and the
information surrounding a question.
COMPRESSION:
a ‘tendency toward the mean’ with estimates of a number of risk occurrence.
(overestimating unlikely risks and underestimating likely risks)
Subjects estimates showed less dispersion than actual risks.
However, the anchoring bias suggests that this pattern might have
changed with different procedures, which would make the
compression of estimates the more fundamental result.
AVAILABILIBTIY:
Some risks are simply more cognitively available for us because
they are more commonly discussed in public (e.g., media).
More available risks consistently received higher estimates than
less available ones (e.g., nuclear power and floods compared to
nanotechnology and dengue fever).
MISCALIBRATION OF CONFIDENCE:
People tend to be highly confident in their ability to estimate risk occurrence.
People tend to chose correctly only 75% of the time but are 90% confident of
having done so. This result is a special case of a general tendency to be
inadequately sensitive to the extent of one’s knowledge.
Information = tool; impacted by mental experiential Issues
Mental Models: assessing Risk Perceptions
Risk Perceptions and Communications:
A mental models approach “present[s] people with information they need in
a form that fits their __________ ways of thinking” (Morgan, et al. p. 2050)
How Mental Models Work:
“People process new information within the context of their existing
beliefs. If they know nothing about a topic, then a new message will
be incomprehensible. If they have erroneous beliefs, then they may
misconstrue the message” (Morgan, et al.)
“communicators need to know the nature and extent of a recipient’s
knowledge and beliefs if they are to design messages that will not
be dismissed, misinterpreted, or allowed to coexist with
misconceptions” Morgan, et al.).
Steps in a perception – driven, risk communication campaign:
1. Create expert model (what is scientifically known?)
2. Open-ended assessment of perceptions
3. Structured protocols/questionnaires to narrow and validate findings
4. Develop communications to provide relevant information given prior
perceptions
5. Iterative testing of successive versions of those communications
FIVE steps in Risk communication:
1. Create Expert model:
2. Open-ended elicitation of people's
beliefs about a hazard, allowing
expression of both accurate and inaccurate concepts.
Two questions:
what is important?
How does each ‘thing’ work?
3. Structured questionnaires designed
to validate and test the prevalence of these beliefs.
E.g., one respondent believed that cancer was caused by extra-
terrestrial beings? You would want to test to see how common this
belief is.
o Radon and house condemnation
4. Development of communications
based on what people need to know to make informed decisions and
assessment of their current beliefs.
5. Iterative testing of successive versions of those communications using
open-ended, closed form, and problem-solving instruments, administered
before, during, and alter the receipt of messages.
Look at Radon Example in Reading
Crisis Communication
Crisis Communication: Managing corporate reputation
What is crisis?
From an organizational standpoint, a crisis is any incident threatening an
organization’s reputation or procedures of operation.
An organizational problem exposed to public attention.
Types of Crises:
Victim crises: minimal crisis responsibility
Natural disasters: acts of nature such as tornadoes or earthquakes
Rumors : false and damaging information being circulated about you
organization
Workplace violence : attack by former or current employee on
current employees on-site
Product tampering/malevolence : external agent causes damage to
the organization
i. Tylenol
ii. Replacing sand with jello pudding and tying to sue them
Accident crisis: low crisis responsibility
Challenges : stakeholder claim that the organization is operating in
an inappropriate manner
Technical error accidents : equipment or technology failure that
causes an industrial accident
Technical error product harm : equipment or technology failure that
cause a product to be defective or potentially harmful
Preventable crises: strong crisis responsibility
Human-error accidents: industrial accident caused by human error
Human-error product harm: product is defective or potentially harmful
because of human error
Organizational misdeed: management actions that put stake holders at risk
and or violate the law
Stages of Crisis:
Stage 1: Pre-crisis planning
Crisis Planning involves Environmental scanning, a group watching for all
types of possible threats from the natural, economic, product, social and
political context.
Crisis prevention is about planning and organizational preparedness
(preparedness is your capacity to successfully deal with complex and
changing situations).
Issues audit (assessment of org vulnerability)
Issues prioritization
Creating a Communications plan
Names & Info for crisis team and key personnel
Determinations of levels and types of crises and plans to respond
Knowing and practicing ‘growth’ of crisis from initial response to EOC
and JIC
Designated situation rooms
On-call staff
Standardized forms and messaging
Dark sites
Units needed to manage
Training Training Training
Stage 2: Crisis Management
Crisis Management – Managing initial to ongoing response
Surprise (cameras on scene before leaders know about situation à Perceived
loss of control, internally (public scrutiny)
Anxiety, externally
Assessing a Crisis
Has someone verified that a crisis actually exists?
Is it contained geographically or will it impact things regionally,
nationally or internationally?
What are the legal and other implications?
What is the nature of the crisis: natural disaster, human error, product
tampering.
What resources are needed and from whom are they coming?
Crisis Communication Response:
1. Be quick and try to have initial response within the first hour.
2. Use a third party to speak for you—but only AFTER a high-ranking
organizational leader has publicly responded and formally introduced this
Public Information Officer.
3. Be accurate by carefully checking all facts
4. Be consistent by keeping spokespeople informed of crisis events and key
message points.
5. Make public safety the number one priority.
6. Use all of the available communication channels including the Internet,
Intranet, and mass notification systems.
7. Provide some expression of concern/symmoathy for victims.
8. Centralize information
9. Remember to include employees in the initial response.
10. Be ready to provide stress and trauma counseling to victims of the
crisis and their families, including employees.
Tips for Handling Media Personnel:
Repairing Reputation:
Deny Strategies:
1. Attack the accuser:
2. Denial:
3. Scapegoat:
Diminish Strategies:
1. Excuse:
a. Provocation:
b. Defeasibility:
c. Accidental:
d. Good intentions:
e. Justification:
Rebuild Strategies:
1. Compensation
2. Apology:
Reinforcing Strategies:
Bolstering:
Ingratiation:
CHAPTER 12
Student advocacy and sweatshop labor
Background:
Russell Athletic: major supplier of clothing and sportswear to college
campuses
In November 2009, Honduran workers’ union concluded an
agreement with Russell Athletic
o Agreement: workers back to work, recognized the union and
agreed to collective bargaining, compensation for last wages,
to allow access for union to Russell apparel plants in Honduras
Outsourcing has positives and negatives
Outsourcing to developing countries is an important business
strategies of large U.S. corporations
Positives: creates new jobs
Negatives: some companies violate workers rights “sweatshop”
environments
o Recent companies under criticism:
Sweatshops:
Sweatshop: Workplace with low wages under harsh working conditions. EX:
(long hours, unhealthy conditions, oppressive environment)
Two views: acceptance if laborers freely contract to work in these
conditions and that the conditions are illegitimate or immoral
Sweatshops are: _______________, unethical, and patently unfair to
workers
U.S. General
Accounting Office:
Environments where federal
laws
Different organizations have
Different definitions for
sweatshops
Brief History of sweatshops
1880-1920: garment and cigar manufacturing
Also see in laundry work, green grocers, and recently “day laborers”
(those who landscape suburban lawns”
Now: clothing industry: easy to separate higher and lower skilled
jobs
o Clothing companies will contract out sewing and finishing
work
o Make fashion oriented clothing: flexible, change quickly, and
done in small batches.
From the beginning sweatshops: rely on immigrant labor :
mainlywomen
o New York City, Seattle, and London and Paris: sweatshops
localized in districts and employed mainly immigrants
o Developing countries clothing sweatshops:
_________________________
Child labor, forced unpaid overtime, and widespread
violations of freedom of association (right to unionize)
History of sweatshops:
Cause of Sweatshops in developing nations:
Cost cutting by contractors who compete against themselves
Sweatshop visibility: public exposure by reformers in England and the U.S.
1889-1890: an investigation by the House of Lords Select
Committee on Sweating System
1884: U.S.: public investigations came as a result of efforts to curb
tobacco homework= outlawing of production of cigars in living
quarters in NY state
In US: fire in 1911 destroying Triangle Shirtwaist Company
500 workers in poor conditions
146 workers died
Triangle fire made public aware of horrible conditions
Sweatshops gradually declined after after (1938 Fair Labor
Standards Act: imposed minimum wage and required overtime pay)
1960’s sweatshops reappeared in large numbers= growing labor force of
immigrants
1980’s sweatshops = business as usual
1990’s =atrocious conditions
1994: U.S. Department of Labor: 93 % health safety violations, 68% did not
pay appropriate overtime wages, 51 % paid less than minimum wage in
California
Sweatshop Dilemma:
Unions: object to sweatshops= concerned about welfare and protect own
members jobs
Moral and economic perspectives:
Morally: exploit and endanger workers
Economic: developing countries might not be able to compete
o Only alternative to subsistence farming, casual labor,
prostitution, and unemployment
NGO’s anti sweatshop involvement:
Ngos: suggest voluntary standards for countries to commit
International Labour Office has Tripartite Declaration of Principles
Concerning Multinational Enterprise and Social Policy: guidelines for
employment, training, working conditions, and industrial relations
1948, General Assembly of United Nations: adopted Universal
Declaration of Human Rights: recognized all humans have inherent
dignity and specific rights
Russel athletic:
Russell Athletic
Nov. 2009: tipping point for struggle between student antisweatshop
movement and corporate worker
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) against Russell Athletic (RA)
RA agreed to rehire
o 1,200 workers in Honduras
Russel Corporations:
Founded by Benjamin Russell in 1902
Marketed under many brands:
Largest private employer in honduras
Owns all 8 factories in Honduras rather
o than subcontract out
2009 Scandal:
fired 145 workers in 2007 for supporting a union
Ignited antisweatshop campaign against company
Forced to reverse decision
Still violated workers rights in 2008
o Harassed union activists
o Made threats to close the jerzees de Honduras factors
o Closed factory on jan 30 2009
NGO’s anti-sweatshop pressure:
Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) investigation of Russell activity released 36
page report on Nov 7, 2008
Union Vice President: Norma Mejia: personally received death threats
WRC issues new reports through 2009 with recommendations to resolve
conflict
WRC= independent labor rights monitoring organization
In-depth investigations, public reports, aids workers at factories to
end labor abuses
Supported by 175 college and university affiliates: focused on labor
practices of factories that make apparel
WRC: Russell’s decision to close the plant= serious challenge yet faced to
the enforcement of university codes of conduct
If plant remained closed:
o Deprive workers of livelihood
o Send message to workers in Honduras (No point in standing
up for rights)
WRC investigation= spurred nationwide student campaign led by USAS
USAS persuaded 96 colleges to sever ties with Russell Athletics
USAS: grassroots organization run by students
Tackled Russell scandal: tactical actions : picketing at NBA finals to
protest leagues licensing agreement with Russell
o Fliers inside sport authority
o Sending twitter messages to Dick’s Sporting Goods customers
USAS reached Congress to gain more support
Fair Labor Association (FLA) – issued a statement June 25, 2009: putting
Russell Athletic on probation for not fitting standards
FLA policy making body is comprised on 3 constituent groups:
o Companies, colleges, and civil society organizations
Victory for USAS and WRC:
Nov. 2009: two years after USAS campaigning with apparel workers-
Honduran workers union concluded an agreement with Russell
Unprecedented victory for labor rights
First time that a factory was shut down to eliminate union was later
reopened because of a worker-activist campaign
Breakthrough: right to organize
Do you think sweatshops can be completely eliminated throughout the world
in the near future?
Coca-Cola in India
Brief Integrative Case 2.1
India’s Changing Marketplace
Soft Drink Industry in India
Total investment by Coke & Pepsi in India: $2,000,000,000
Direct employment by soft-drink industry: ___________ people
Indirect employment (supplies, shipping, etc.): ___________ people
The Charges Against Coke
2002
Villagers in Kerala allege:
____________ levels had sunk
That drinking water was ____________ by the Coke bottling plant
Health Minister of Kerala bans sale of all Coca-Cola and PepsiCo products,
claiming the products contained unsafe levels of pesticide
The Charges Against Coke
Sunita Narin
(director of Center of Science and Environment):
“It’s wonderful. Pepsi and Coke are doing our work for us. Now the whole
nation knows that there is a pesticide problem.”
Atul Singh
(CEO, Coca-Cola India):
“If pesticides are in the groundwater, why isn’t anyone else being tested? We
are continuously being challenged because of who we are.”
India’s Response to the Allegations
India’s Response to the Allegations
Coke’s Path Forward (in India)
Coke partners with local and international partners to address water
______________
Central Ground Water Authority
State Ground Water Boards
Schools and Colleges
NGO’s
Coke’s Path Forward (in India)
Coca-Cola embarks on a campaign to address micro-nutrient malnutrition, or
“________ ________”
In India, Coke introduces “Vitingo,” an orange-flavored beverage fortified
with ______-_________
Coke’s Path Forward (Globally)
Emphasis on water conservation
Lessons Learned
Coca-Cola did not:
__________ local government reactions to test results
__________ quickly enough to customer anxiety
__________ how fast news travels in modern India
Coca-Cola did:
Form committees in India and the US to address the problem
Commission its own lab tests
Respond in detail (eventually)
UN Global Water Challenge
Coke’s experience in Kerala as a snap-shot of a global problem