The Role of Perception in the Decision Making Process.
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The Role of Perception in the Decision Making Process Perception is more important than reality. It doesn’t matter what is reality if a person views it differently. One’s behavior is a direct result of the way he or she sees things. Two people may experience an event together, a car accident, for example; when interviewed there will be similarity in their accounts, but each will have a unique interpretation of the details. Why is this?

According to Stephen P. Robbins, “The world as it is perceived is the world that is behaviorally important,” (Robbins, 2005, p. 134). Because people act on their perceptions, each person’s perception is his or her reality. This explains how reality can be different for different people.

Perception must be considered in organizational behavior. Perception effects management decisions, whether deciding to hire a new employee, giving a performance review, or making a major decision regarding the direction to take their business. Perception also determines an employee’s job satisfaction and performance.

Factors influencing perception are threefold, the perceiver, the situation, and the target or subject (Robbins, 2005, p. 135). One interprets situations or information in light of his or her own attitudes and experiences. If a person has had positive experiences in a similar situation, or with a similar type of manager or employee, he or she will perceive the new experience in light of the past and bring pre-conceived ideas, opinions, and expectations to their interpretation. This may cause positive or negative perception. Often the perceiver may not evaluate new data because he or she will not look past his or her initial evaluation. A business could lose an opportunity of an innovative idea because it was never considered.

The situation may also heavily influence ones perception. When people are comfortable within the environment, their opinions are more positive. If one is in an environment that is associated with bad experiences, then he or is are likely to perceive the person or object under consideration in a negative way. People may be making an unfounded judgment because of the situation (Robbins, 2005, p. 135).

“The Attribution theory has been proposed to develop explanations of the ways in which we judge people differently, depending what meaning we attribute to the behavior,” (Robbins, 2005, p. 136). When we are trying to make a judgment about a person, we try to determine the cause of their behavior. If we can find some acceptable cause to attribute to it, then we can determine that the subject is not at fault. “The observer is interested in answering the question of why the stimulus person acted as he or she did. Thus the average person acts as a naïve psychologist in seeking explanations for behavior. …causes for behavior are attributed to either the environment or the person,” (“The concise corsini encyclopedia of psychology and behavioral science“, 2004, para. 3).

As managers and employees we look to explain the reason for behaviors. If we can attribute the behavior to an external cause rather than internal, we can perceive that person not at fault. However, if no external cause is found then the person’s behavior is considered internal and our perception will be negative and corrective actions may be indicated.

When looking at a target, (subject or person) one often uses shortcuts. It saves time and also is a natural method of making a quick decision whether to consider the target further. “Because we can’t observe everything going on about us, we engage in selective perception,” (Robbins, 2005, p. 138). We have to find a way to make judgments in a timely manner.

A shortcut in evaluation people often used is stereotyping. We judge them according to the group we perceive them to be in (Robbins, 2005, p. 140). Stereotyping is a strong influence on the perception of a person. A manager may have experience with a certain ethnic group that was very positive and perhaps he has had a few employees of a different ethnic group who caused nothing but problems. These experiences may slant his or her perception of future potential employees and result in a very qualified applicant not being hired because the manager couldn’t see past his or her perception. Stereotyping can occur in many different areas. Employees also are likely to have stereotyped opinions of managers. They may have had a very bad experience with a male manager followed by a positive experience with a female manager. The employees will probably expect good work relations with a future female manager and perhaps fear another male.

Negative perceptions can reduce the productivity of a workforce and make it difficult to maintain a positive work environment. It can also cause excessive turnover. These results are detrimental to the profitability of any business. It is important for the manager to be aware of the principles of perception for him or herself and for his or her employees. The manager can use this knowledge to overcome negative perceptions and produce a positive workplace. He or she can also evaluate his or her own perceptions and endeavor to recognize influences of perception when interviewing potential new hires, and when seeking to motivate current employees. If one is aware that they stereotype a certain gender, for example, then one can consciously make an effort to fairly evaluate a person without allowing his or her gender to be an issue.

“It follows that a goal of identifying a single, important issue will evoke different, probably simpler and more restricted, information processing than will a goal of identifying multiple problem issues,” (Beyer et al., 1997, p. 5) Selective perception is a method to isolate what stimuli or information we want to consider. We can’t look at every possible aspect of every situation or person, so we must choose the criteria or information we will evaluate. Selective perception can help up perform tasks and make decisions in a timely manner, but it can also result in important information being overlooked. Making a list of criteria and organizing them in order of importance will assist the manager to steer away from bias and focus on the important information.

Another shortcut, the halo effect occurs when we make conclusions about a person based upon one characteristic, such as intelligence, sociability, or appearance (Robbins, 2005, p. 138). This shortcut will result in a shortsighted evaluation of a person or situation and should be avoided, although it is the tendency for people to make this shortcut

Ideally organizational management would make their decisions by following a rational approach. Steps would be taken to identify the problem, seek solutions and evaluate all the data before a decision is reached. This approach would ensure the best solution was selected. Because of the time constraints and demands of the real-world, most decisions cannot be made this way. When there are too many variables to consider the average human cannot efficiently sort through them all. A method to reduce these variables into a manageable amount and still have a satisfactory and sufficient amount of criteria (Robbins, 2005, p. 148), we use bounded rationality.

The manager or employee will make a limited list of choices. These tend to be the most common or logical choices. The list will not include all the possible choices and will likely not include new and innovative ideas. Decisions are usually good enough, but not necessarily the best solutions. The first acceptable solution often is the one chosen (Robbins, 2005, p. 140).

During the decision-making process the manager may be influenced by bias. Over-estimating is an error that results in poor judgment and bad decisions. Intuition from an experienced manager will result in better decisions than a cocky young manager. . A manager brings his or her biases and pre-conceived ideas internally into the decision process. To make good decisions, he or she needs to be aware of them.

After considering all the choices, evaluating them and coming to a tentative decision the manager must finally consider the ethical implications of his or her decision. The criteria to consider are utilitarianism, providing the greatest good for the greatest number and non-utilitarian, focusing instead on the rights of the individual and what is just (Robbins, 2005, p. 159). Ethical choices are largely personal within the constraints of the company one is employed in. When working with clients and personnel from foreign companies, one must be aware of their cultural norms to make decisions they will perceive as acceptable.

Perception is a key factor in being a good manager, a valuable employee, and in making good business decisions. Bias and shortcuts can ease the process but can also result in poor decisions. Whether evaluating a potential new employee or giving an employee evaluation, one must make an effort to be fair and unbiased in judgment.
References
Beyer, J. M., Chattapodhyay, P., George, E., Click, W., Ogilvie, D., & Pugliese, D. (1997, June). The selective perception of managers revisited. Acadamy of Management Journal, 40(3), 716-737. doi: AN 9708122231
Robbins, S. P. (2005). Perception and individual decision making. In Orginizational behaviour (pp. 132-167). : .
The concise corsini encyclopedia of psychology and behavioral science. (2004). In Interpersonal perception (. Retrieved from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/wileypsych/interpersonal_perception