Forecasting and Ethical Decision Making: What Matters?

Pressure and ethical decision-making

“…On the other hand, mounting evidence suggests that performance pressure may not impact complex cognitive processes, such as forecasting and EDM (Byrne et al, 2010;Stenmark et al, 2010Stenmark et al, , 2011Stenmark, 2013). These studies seem to suggest that these processes are not impacted by this situational variable, despite the fact that many other, similarly complex processes, are, indeed negatively impacted by pressure.…”

“…All participants read about a problem in a vignette. The vignette, which has been used in previous research on EDM (e.g., Stenmark et al, 2011;Stenmark, 2013), details a business dilemma intended to be representative of dilemmas experienced in the workplace. Specifically, the participant is asked to play the role of a manager in a hypothetical technology firm that is developing a new mobile device.…”

“…This problem vignette was selected from a larger set of problems that have been used in previous studies on EDM (Stenmark et al, 2011;Stenmark, 2013). A single vignette was chosen, so as to minimise participant fatigue.…”

“…The coded dimensions were chosen and operationalised based on previous research that has determined them to be important for the cognitive processes involved in EDM (e.g., Mumford et al, 2006;Stenmark et al, 2010Stenmark et al, , 2011Stenmark, 2013). For all participants, the coders performed numerical counts on: number of steps (in the steps response field) and number of consequences identified (in the how did it work out?…”

ACED IT: A tool for improved ethical and moral decision-making

“…Specifically, in addition to the plans and forecasts, the present study also examined the number of people participants identified who were impacted by the problem, the number of steps participants identified that would be necessary to implement the problem and the number of consequences participants identified that would result from the implementation of the chosen solution. These tactics were examined based on previous research (e.g., Stenmark et al, 2010Stenmark et al, , 2013 that determined that the identification of a larger number of elements of the problem is associated with both better forecasting and better EDM. Finally, the ethicality of the participants' chosen solutions was also evaluated.…”