Managerial Decision Making

MANAGERIAL DECISION MAKING Student’s Name Course Professor’s Name University City (State) Date Introduction Biases and emotions have a strong influence on individual perception and decisions. A manager needs to recognize their impact on recruitment decisions. The subsequent paper describes four fundamental biases and one emotion likely to influence my decision at any stage of the hiring process. The biases discussed include ease of recall, insensitivity to base rates, anchoring, and over-precision. Moreover, I will also identify the role of fear in decision-making. Understanding these emotions and biases can help me make more coherent, rational, and practical decisions during recruitment. Bias 1: Ease of Recall Bias It happens when we make decisions based on the information that can be simply recollected and available from our memory. It can be due to some recent experience or unforgettable for some exclusive reasons (Richie & Josephson, 2017, p. 66). They may emotionally impact the person, which can easily influence their future decisions. Bias falls under the availability heuristic, which is the individual assessment of the probability or significance of any event established on a recollection of instances from the past. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman discovered the bias. Their research revealed the mental shortcuts preferred by people who make errors in their judgments due to the availability of recent data. People tend to misjudge the significance of some information. In the recruitment process, the ease of recall bias can strongly impact the decision during the review process of candidate's resumes. For example, I might choose a candidate from a reputable university for the expected position over a candidate with a small university degree. A person from a small university may be more qualified or eligible for the job, but the person's past affiliation can result in ease of recall bias. The approach I selected to avoid bias is Bazerman and Moore's strategy to establish a structured evaluation process (Bazerman & Moore, 2013, p. 197). It involves a comparison of the selected resumes against pre-established criteria linked to the job description. The ease of recall bias can be reduced by concentrating on the essential skills and experiences relevant to the job. The bias can significantly influence the initial stage of the hiring process during the shortlisting of the applicants and their resumes. Bias 2: Insensitivity to Sample Size Insensitivity to sample size is defined as the bias to ignore the size of a sample when constructing the inference from the data collected. It is a general assumption that sample size does not matter and is either large or small; the results for both sample sizes are equally reliable and accurate. This approach can result in deceptive or wrong conclusions as the result can be misleading and often does not represent the entire population. This particular bias falls under the representativeness heuristic, which explains the tendency of an individual to oversee the significance of sample size during critical decision-making (Kliegr et al., 2021, p. 5). The people misinterpret the findings of the small sample as representing the whole population. Small samples are not as reliable as large samples as they have low representation. For instance, a sample size of 10 customers shows that 7 out of them are satisfied and believe that the product has high quality and effectiveness, but when a sample size of 100 is taken, it might show 20 positive reviews, making the smaller sample much less reliable. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman discovered the bias while researching heuristics and biases. Their research concluded that people generalize the pattern of small sample size on the whole population. As a hiring manager, bias can significantly impact me during the interview or referral check stage. Applying the bias to a hiring scenario extensively influences my emotions as a hiring manager. For instance, a candidate might share his two success stories with me regarding his achievements, resulting in overestimating his abilities on my behalf. However, he ignored the failures he encountered or did not mention the unfinis...