CATCHING AND CORRECTING ERRORS AND BIASES
• Write a 3-page paper (APA 7th format, no abstract required or cover page required – DO NOT EXCEED 1000 words on this portion) with the following key points:
Written Assignment: Consulting for Sparks and Crash Computer Company #4
Case Study: Mr. Sparks and Ms. Crash are puzzled by the extreme growth projected by their sales team for the upcoming year. Although they would hope the sales projections would be true, their own evaluation of the industry and their share of the market is not quite as optimistic. They would like to have the sales team arrive at a more “accurate” projection, so that they can better plan for necessary production and expansion.
You interview the sales department and find a lot of very confident and positive individuals. These are “can do” people who believe that they can sell anything to anyone. When you ask them to support their projections, the team first tells you about the tremendous success they had last year and that “they just knew” it was going to happen. They tell you that the projections must be high or else “you lose out on the opportunity if you don’t think big”. They go on to say that they feel like they will regret it if they think about setting the projections lower. Finally, you point out some lost accounts from last year, which they explain as “the fault of distribution, not sales”. Apparently, they “always” handle their end and attribute any difficulties that may arise to other departments.
Your objective is to write a proposal for SC Co. to define the problem and describe an intervention that would help address the issue.
Answer the following points in your proposal.
• Define the problem as you see it
• Select at least three (3) concepts/theories from this week’s reading to address the problem (see lecture notes for concepts/theories).
o Briefly describe the concepts/theories and how they help to understand and explain the problem.
• Compose an intervention for the problem from the concepts/theories and describe what you would do.
• Predict, given the same concepts/theories, the outcome of your intervention.
References and Citations should include below articles and/or peer-reviewed articles in the last 5 years:
• Motivated Reasoning – Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480-498. (PDF) Download (PDF)
• Judgment and Decision-Making – Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice. American Psychologist, 58(9), 697-720. (06-Kahneman-2003.pdf Download 06-Kahneman-2003.pdf)
• Attribution Errors – Schyns, B., & Hansbrough, T. (2008). Why the brewery ran out of beer: The attribution of mistakes in a leadership context. Social Psychology, 39(3), 197-203. (PDF) Download (PDF)
• Self-Serving Bias and Counterfactual Thinking – Goerke, M., Moller, J., Schulz-Hardt, S., Napiersky, U., & Frey, D. (2004). “It’s not my fault–but only I can change it”: Counterfactual and prefactual thoughts of managers. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(2), 279-292. (PDF) Download (PDF)
• Behavioral Economics – Ricciardi, V., & Simon, H.K. (2000). What is behavioral finance? Business, Education & Technology Journal, 2(2), 1-9. (PDF) Download (PDF)
• Neuroeconomics – Loewenstein, G., Rick, S., & Cohen, J.D. (2008). Neuroeconomics. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 647-672. (PDF) Download (PDF)
