Organizational Behavior, 17e

Influences on Decision Making: Individual Differences and Organizational Constraints

1. 5 Explain how individual differences and organizational constraints affect decision making.

We turn here to factors that influence the way people make decisions and the degree to which they are susceptible to errors and biases. We discuss individual differences and then organizational constraints.

Individual Differences

As we discussed, decision making in practice is characterized by bounded ­rationality, common biases and errors, and the use of intuition. Individual ­differences such as personality also create deviations from the rational model.

PERSONALITY Research suggests personality influences our decisions. Let’s look at conscientiousness and self-esteem. ...