| DRUMMOND, Dr. Helga |
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| No author information available |
| Articles |
Winter 2009
Learning from fiasco: what causes decision error and how to avoid it
Helga Drummond, Julia Hodgson
All decisions involving uncertainty run the risk of failure. Whilst chance almost invariably influences outcomes, the authors suggest that many costly decision errors made by organisations could be avoided if decision-makers understood more about how and why their ability to exercise rational judgement can become undermined. This paper explains the main non-rational forces likely to impinge upon decision-making, with reference to extant theory and research. The authors discuss how, contrary to terminating faltering projects, organisations can end up investing more resources in them - a phenomenon known as escalation of commitment. The authors then consider how organisations can improve decision-making. Controversially, it is suggested that risk-management techniques may not always reduce danger but actually add to it. |
Summer 2006
Monkey Business
Helga Drummond, Julia Hodgson
Management is synonymous with planning, order and control. For all that has been written in the popular literature about thriving on chaos and the like, management teaching continues to emphasise control based theories of organization. Ever since Frederick Winslow Taylor set himself the task of measuring, timing and specifying work we have been pre-occupied with control. Indeed, an organization devoid of control might lapse into anarchy and, as a result, loose all power. We suggest, however, that a control based perspective of organizations is one sided because it obscures the potentially de-stabilising effects of attempting to impose control and misses potentially productive but paradoxical possiblities including subtle and counter-intuitive strategies of control. We attempt to redress the balance by invoking the novel image of a chimpanzees' tea-party to highlight the limitations of control based approaches to managing and to suggest counter-intuitive possibilities. The paper is structured as follows. First the role of metaphor in generating knowledge and insight is outlined. This is followed by a description of the chimpanzees' tea party and an analysis of its relevance to the management. The paper ends with a series of recommendations for practice. |
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