MNO 2705 Day 1: An Introduction To Leadership and Decision Making Under Uncertainty

MNO 2705
Day 1: An Introduction to Leadership and

Decision Making Under Uncertainty
Sam Yam, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Management
National University of Singapore
NUS Presentation Title 2006
Agenda
• Who’s Sam?
• Course overview
• Team assignment
• Introduction to a decision making exercise
Who is Sam?
B.S. Psychology 2009

University of Washington
Who is Sam?
M.A. Child Psychology 2011

Washington State University
Who is Sam?
M.S. Organizational Behavior 2014 Started as an Assistant Professor in

Ph.D. Organizational Behavior 2015 June 2015
University of Washington National University of Singapore
My research
My research: Examples
• Is corporate citizenship always good?
https://hbr.org/2016/09/pushing-employees-to-go-the-extra-mile-can-be-counterproductive
• Can flextime hurt your career?

https://hbr.org/2014/05/with-flextime-bosses-prefer-early-birds-to-night-owls
• How can air pollution affect employees?

http://www.todayonline.com/commentary/how-air-pollution-affects-workplace-behaviour
• Does humor help or hurt leadership?

https://hbr.org/2017/03/when-joking-with-your-employees-leads-to-bad-behavior
If you want to know more about me

The Straits Times:
http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/a-professor-
whos-as-youthful-as-his-students
Poets & Quants:

http://poetsandquants.com/2016/04/13/2016-best-40-40-
professors-kai-chi-sam-yam-national-university-singapore/
Who are your TAs?

Overview of the module

• Syllabus (to be found in your IVLE Workbin)
• Readings:
• All readings will be made available in IVLE or available in the
NUS online library
• Kahneman, D. (2013). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux (recommended)
Assessment
Individual-based course work
In-class participation (20%)
In-class quiz (30%)
Team-based course work

Decision Challenge Team Project (Teams of 5-7) (30%)
Decision-Point Reflection (Teams of 2) (20%)
In-class participation (20%)

• Focused on how you enhance the learning of your peers.
Assessment criteria emphasises presence, participation,
contribution of ideas, and collegiality.
• Quantity and quality
In-class quiz: March 23rd, 1000-1200 (30%)

• Focused on understanding of and ability to work with concepts
covered in the assigned readings. A portion of the quiz will be
case-based, with the case distributed one week in advance.
• Closed book format
Decision Challenge Team Project (30%)

• Identify and investigate a challenging decision situation from the past
(at least 50 years ago), recent events (within the last 12 months), or
an ongoing challenge
• The situation must be
• Asia-relevant
• involves aspects of uncertainty and risk
• Analyze the situation from the standpoint of the essentials for
effective decision making
Presentation Project Examples

Decision Challenge Team Project (30%)

Deliverables
• Elevator Pitch: Your team will present an “elevator pitch” of your
proposal during class on Weeks 5 and 6. You will receive comments
from the whole class.
• Formal Project Proposal: One page (due the Friday of your elevator
pitch week)
• 20-min presentation + 10-min Q&A in Weeks 11 and 12
Decision-Point Reflection (20%)

• 3-page essay
• Dyad-based project
• Can be submitted to IVLE at ANY time during the semester,
but latest by Apr 19th.
Leadership as a group process
Let’s make teams!

• Meet and greet your team members

• Email the TA your team information for both
team projects (Names, Student ID, Team
Number)
Subject line: Decision Challenge Team 8am

OR
Decision Reflection Dyad 8am
TA: obrltc@nus.edu.sg
Are leadership and decision making common sense?

• Fluffy; can’t be taught; useless; I rather take finance modules
• I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed this module
given my immense hate for fluff….. And I felt that MNO can be
applicable and non-fluffy, and that the topic has actual substance
and is worth discussing about.
Leadership: Does it matter to organizations?

“I hated organizational behavior at business school. But OB turns
out to be the most important class you can take here. Because the
ability to attract people, to pay them the right way, to create culture
and values and reinforce them, that’s what makes companies
great.”
Jeff Immelt, former CEO of General Electric in a speech at Harvard

Business School
Leadership: Does it matter to organizations?

• 2006 Graduate Management Admission Council® survey of
1270 employers found that “soft skills” were most attractive to
recruiters, but also most lacking
Does it matter to me?

Ethics: Does it matter?

Develop valuable skills
“Personal ethics and integrity” was listed as one of the three most
important attributes recruiters look for in student hires (Wall Street
Journal, 2007)
1. Communication and interpersonal skills
2. Ability to work well within a team
3. Personal ethics and integrity
…….
14. Content knowledge of the core curriculum
Hays (2014)
“[In Singapore] Employers view a candidate’s ethical behaviour as a non-
negotiable…..[this] is apparent across all industries, although it is most
obvious in the banking sector.”
Evidence-based management
• How Google sold its engineers on management
• The team:
• 1/3 PhDs (social psychology, organizational behavior, sociology,
etc.)
• 1/3 MBAs (the usual HR people)
• 1/3 Statisticians (data mining experts)
• Empiricism
Evidence-based management
1. Opinion: Gut feeling (e.g., “I have a friend who…”)
The plural of anecdote is not data
2. Data: Structured but raw; not easily digestible
3. Metrics: Ratios, counts, trends, etc.
4. Analysis: Identifies relationships (e.g., an increase in XXX
leads to an increase in YYY)
5. Insights: Influences decision makers
6. Actions: Process or policy changes
Foundations of social sciences

• Averages, standard deviations, outliers
• Moderators
• Variables that affect the direction and/or strength of the relation
between dependent and independent variables
• Causality?
1. Temporal precedence
2. Covariation of the cause and effect
3. Ruling out plausible alternative explanations
Decision making simulation

• Leadership team to guide deliberations
• Participants are investors in carter racing enterprise and have a
vested interest in its success
• Maximum of 30 minutes provided in which to make a decision
about racing
1. Spend 10 mins in reading the case individually
2. Spend the next 20 mins discussing what to do
Payoff for racing

Outcome Probability Revenues Expenses Expected
value
Race: 50% 1.000 K + 750 K
Finish top 5 (12/24) 500 K
Race: 13% 500 K + 65 K
Finish not top 5 (3/24)
Race: 29% 20 K - 5.8 K
Blow engine (7/24)
Race: 8% 500 K + 40 K
No finish other (2/24)
Net expected value for racing ~800 K

Payoff for not racing

Outcome Probability Revenues Expenses Expected
value
No race: 100% 500 K 25 K 482.5 K
7.5 K
Gasket failure probabilities

Temperature Races with Number of Estimated
Range (F) Incidents Races Probability
< 60 3 3 100%
61-70 3 11 27%
71-80 1 9 11%
>80 0 1 0%
The Challenger Disaster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYX35Z_L-dw
The Challenger Disaster

• NASA was under severe budget pressure. The shuttle
program’s success is vital to future congressional support
• The record of 24 successful launches was a powerful decision
context. Because of these previous successes, engineers were
asked to prove a failure was going to occur, not that success
was questionable
• The Challenger launch was intended as a media event to attract
attention to the shuttle program. The mission’s success was
regarded as important for morale within NASA
Decision making conclusions
Advocacy Inquiry
Underlying concept Contest Collaboration
Purpose Persuading & lobbying Testing & evaluating
Participants’ role Spokespeople Critical thinkers
Minority views Discouraged/dismissed Cultivated/valued

Outcomes Winners/losers Collective ownership
Decision making conclusions
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

and whenever history repeats itself the price goes up
Next class
• Ethical decision making
• Do the readings in the following order: 1) Ferrell et al. (2017)
and 2) Sandel (2009)

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MNO 2705

Day 1: An Introduction to Leadership and

Sam Yam, Ph.D.

B.S. Psychology 2009

M.A. Child Psychology 2011

M.S. Organizational Behavior 2014 Started as an Assistant Professor in

• Can flextime hurt your career?

• How can air pollution affect employees?

• Does humor help or hurt leadership?

If you want to know more about me

Poets & Quants:

Who are your TAs?

Overview of the module

Team-based course work

In-class participation (20%)

In-class quiz: March 23rd, 1000-1200 (30%)

Decision Challenge Team Project (30%)

Presentation Project Examples

Decision Challenge Team Project (30%)

Decision-Point Reflection (20%)

Leadership as a group process

Let’s make teams!

• Meet and greet your team members

Subject line: Decision Challenge Team 8am

Are leadership and decision making common sense?

Leadership: Does it matter to organizations?

Jeff Immelt, former CEO of General Electric in a speech at Harvard

Leadership: Does it matter to organizations?

Does it matter to me?

Ethics: Does it matter?

Foundations of social sciences

Decision making simulation

Payoff for racing

Net expected value for racing ~800 K

Payoff for not racing

Gasket failure probabilities

The Challenger Disaster

The Challenger Disaster

Decision making conclusions

Minority views Discouraged/dismissed Cultivated/valued

Decision making conclusions

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it

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