Lecture 3

dinsdag 21 november 2023 12:24

• If you are a boss, how do you start with getting your employees to follow your methods?
○ A rule book / procedure book
• Example: VISA Waiver program
○ For countries where inhabitants did not need a visa, there was a question list
○ But strange questions:
 Are you involved ine sponiage or prosecutions with Nazi Germany?
 Possible answers were yes or no
□ Of course nobody would answer yes..
• Rule setting
○ In traffic, sometimes rules are meant to be good but confusing
○ These can have bad results -> cycling into traffic if signs are unclear
• Rules and rule modelling
○ A ''slagboom'' might lead to people simply cycling around it
○ Rule moddeling: concept of conformity, people break rules easier than others do
• Examples of code of conduct
○ Values, most important rules
○ Google allows dogs, but conversely does not allow cats because they would be stressed
out
○ However, Enron had a stellar code of conduct..
○ The code alone doesn't work, it's about implementation, tone at the top
○ Same for traffic rules, merely a slagboom doesn't work
• Priming
○ Example bateson
 They had an honesty box for coffee and milk, people had to pay themselves
 Not everybody pays
 They couldn't afford somebody sitting there constantly
 How can we influence the honesty of people?
 They implemented a sticker at eye height, during one week they added flowers,
implimenting a nice environment to encourage paying
 Another image, the other week, was a pair of human eyes
 The pair of human eyes lead to significantly more honest people
○ Another example of priming
 Eighteen month old children
 Researchers told parents they were researching voabulary
 They showed pictures and asked child to name what is on the picture
 There is a big red teapot, but in the back there are small objects, either 1 puppet,
2 puppets (one image with puppets that were friendly, one that weren't) and an
image with some cubes in the back
 The researcher would then drop the pen in front of the researcher, would the
child help? (nice behaviour?)
 The children that had seen the nice puppets in the background (that weren't the
focus!) showed a lot more helping behaviour than the other groups
 Instead of 40%, 80% of children helped
 So children were influenced by something in the background -> PRIMING!
○ Priming with wallets, how often were they returned with certain pictures included?
 No picture: 15%
 Charity card: 20%
 Elderly couple: 28%
 Family: 48%
 Puppy: 53%
 Baby: 88%
  The underlying thought is probably that a baby needs help, so perhaps the little
bito f money should be returned
 A charity card implies that the person is good

• Two groups counting: one counting papers with numbers on it, others counting money
○ The group counting money ate twice as much food that was on the table
○ Apparently money triggers hunger -> perhaps it gives the feel of having resources, and
thus food?
○ The group that counted money were also less likely to help somebody that dropped a lot
of paper
○ People that handled money could cope with ice water twice as long -> pain reducing
effect of money -> money equals power, and power equals physical strength.
○ So money makes you more
 Self-reliant -> you think others are too, so less helping behaviour
 Money meant resources -> which used to be equal to food, so made you more
hungry
 More able to handle pain -> mental strength
• Rotterdam eye hospital
○ 20.000 surgeries per year
○ Despite many controls, they had 20 wrong eye surgeries per year, which was on par with
the worldwide error level
○ First thing they installed is that doctors should ask: we are going to operate your left
eye, is that correct?
 This is the first control to get wrong surgeries down
○ But, people were confused, left for you or left for me?
 So then doctor would touch the cheeck of the patient on the side where the
operation would be
 Second control
 But, there was an incident that the bed was turned around. Thus, markers were
then used to indicate which eye should be operated
○ They went down to 7 wrong eye surgeries per year
○ But, after reaching 7, they increased checklist
 However, the number went up instead of down
 So more controls became less effective
 Think back of traffic: many traffic signs can be confusing and be counterintuitive
 So, it became unclear and did not work anymore
 So the optimum was around 7 wrong eye surgeries per year. They were the best in
the world given number of operations. More checks didn't help.
○ Flightsimulator training
 These were given to medical teams
 They were not actually learning to fly, but more so pre-flight checks. So checks
under stress
 The next year there were 0 incidents
 Important here is that levels were sapped, assistent was captain and head surgeon
was assistant: to prevent authorit yproblems
• The emperor's new clothes
○ Only ''smart'' people or whatever can see these clothes
○ Emperor doesn't want to admit he can't see it
○ Parades naked, and nobody wants to admit this at first
○ So, in an organization you should have voices against the ''main'' view
 You dont want organizational silence
□ This can be caused by self-interest: employees that claim work pressure is
too high may be hard to believe due to self-interest
□ Or, management can be inclined to think that they know things better.
Managers are typically the well-performing employees and can thus be
inclined to think that they are better than the team and don't need to listen.
Of course this doesn't mean you know better all the time.
 □ For being a team, some can believe that all noses should be in one direction.
If one person dissents, some believe this is bad. So implicit belief: dissent is
bad.
 Whistleblower mechanisms
□ Internal reporting, mechanism is a set of policies and procedures within an
organisation which establish effective channels and protection and support
for reporting persons
 -whistleblower hotline
 Independent investigation
 Protection against retaliation