MORAL DILEMMAS: INTERTWINED BEHAVIOURS & WAYS TO NAVIGATE – CHAPTER – 02

***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Meaning of Ethics/ Morals, Traditional Interpretations Of Ethics, Three Broad Types of Ethical Theory, Interpretation of Moral/ Ethical Dilemmas)

Link to Chapter 01:

MORAL DILEMMAS: INTERTWINED BEHAVIOURS & WAYS TO NAVIGATE – CHAPTER – 01

Moral Dilemma Questions

In a time when many question our national moral character, pondering what to do in various situations can be a positive exercise preparing an individual for worst-&-best-case. We will look at some examples of moral dilemma questions to aid in placing ourselves in the midst of them.

01. The Unfaithful Friend

You go out with your spouse for dinner at a new restaurant you have not frequented before. It is in a part of town you rarely visit. You are shocked to see your friend’s spouse having dinner with a very young, attractive person. From the way they are behaving, it is obvious they are more than friends. The couple finish their meal and leave without seeing you. They behave very affectionately on the way out the door.

02. An Office Theft
You are in charge of the petty cash at the office. However, a co-worker is responsible for making a weekly trip to the bank to make the business deposit and obtain petty cash for the following week. In a conversation with your mutual supervisor, you are asked if the increase in the petty cash amount was enough. You, however, have not seen any additional money. You realize your co-worker has been pocketing the additional money.

03. Midnight Death

You have worked years to be successful in your father’s business. You felt you were obligated to take over as he worked his whole life to build the business left to him by his father. However, the large businesses in town have seriously cut into profits and for several years you and your family have just managed to scrape by. Your father’s health has declined and he has been hospitalized. He has a substantial life insurance policy that expires at midnight. If he dies before midnight, you will inherit enough money to pursue a career you have always dreamed of and provide adequately for your family.

04. Get Rich

Your friend offers you an opportunity to make a great deal of money very quickly. He has arranged to set up an off-shore account for your profits. He will not tell you exactly how he is making this money, but you get the impression it is not exactly legal. He only wants an investment of Rs 50,000/- and promises you will have enough from your minimal investment that you will never need to work again.

05. Telling a Secret

Your friend tells you that they committed a crime. They explain that they are having trouble sleeping at night and feel you are the only one they can trust with their confession. A few days later, you read in the paper that someone has been arrested for your friend’s crime.

Moral Dilemma Scenarios

Here are some moral dilemma scenarios. Each scene is characterized by the need to make a difficult decision. As with all moral dilemmas, there is no right or wrong.

01. Sarcastic Friend
Your friend has a great sense of humour. However, sometimes his jokes involve making fun of others in inappropriate ways. He will point out a physical flaw or look for something odd or different about a person and make an unkind comment. You feel uncomfortable when your friend does this. Do you say something or just laugh along with him?

02. Hit and Run
Late one night you are driving home in a bad rainstorm. A drunk reels out in front of your car and you try to stop, but hit him. Nobody sees you. The guy looks and smells as if he is homeless. You check to see how badly he is hurt and realize he is dead. You have never even had a speeding ticket and are an upright, professional, with a family and are well-known and respected in your community. Do you make a report anonymously, confess your crime, or drive on home and forget about it, knowing no one is going to pursue the death of a homeless drunk?

03. Third Chance
Your teenager has had a rough few years. First came an arrest for shoplifting. The item was of little value, so it was only a misdemeanour. Then your teen was with some friends who were smoking pot and driving too fast. Your teen has promised they are turning over a new leaf and seem to be on the right track, doing better in school, coming home by curfew, and generally having a much better attitude. Now you get a call from the local police station saying your son was with a group of kids who broke into a liquor store and stole beer. Do you go to the station and see how you can get your teen out of this jam or let him accept whatever consequences befall him?

04. Reward a Job Well Done
You understand the importance of team work in your job. You share ideas and responsibilities with your team members on a daily basis. In your weekly team meeting with your supervisor, one of your co-workers takes credit for a time and money saving change in operating procedures you devised. Your supervisor erroneously thinks your co-worker came up with the change and your co-worker does not correct the misinterpretation, but allows the boss to not only commend him, but offer a bonus. Do you go to your co-worker and demand he correct the situation, go to your supervisor and explain you should receive the commendation and reward, or keep quiet as you do not believe in ownership of ideas?

Moral Dilemma Questions

Moral dilemma questions might be characterized as “What if?” questions. It can be hard to take a close look at ourselves and ask, “Will I do the right thing when confronted with a difficult choice?” Frequently, it is the small decisions we make that truly define our moral character.

Approaches For Ethical Decision-Making

The more novel and difficult the ethical choice we face, the more we need to rely on discussion and dialogue with others about the dilemma. There are three broad frameworks to guide ethical decision making:

While each of the three frameworks is useful for making ethical decisions, none is perfect—otherwise the perfect theory would have driven the other imperfect theories from the field long ago. Knowing the advantages and disadvantages of the frameworks will be helpful in deciding which is most useful in approach the particular situation with which we are presented.

In many situations, all three frameworks will result in the same—or at least very similar—conclusions about what to do, although they will typically give different reasons for reaching those conclusions. However, because they focus on different ethical features, the conclusions reached through one framework will occasionally differ from the conclusions reached through one (or both) of the others.

The Importance of Studying Moral/ Ethical Dilemmas

The exploration needs to dig deeper, taking into consideration not only how to make difficult decisions, but how the decisions reflect the underlying values that are important to us. The practice will not only foster better ethical decision-making, but exercises that require assessments of ethical dilemmas can improve reasoning and critical thinking skills—valuable assets in many contexts.

Ethical training develops important “soft skills” like respect, empathy and compassion. Exploring conflicts from different points of view—and striving to understand the value behind an opinion—also makes us more empathetic to others. Identifying the principles that comprise the foundation of our beliefs as well as those that guide others allows us to hone social and emotional competencies like self-awareness and social awareness.

A Framework for Making Moral/ Ethical Decisions

Decisions about right and wrong permeate everyday life. Ethics should concern all levels of life: acting properly as individuals, creating responsible organizations and governments, and making our society as a whole more ethical. One Framework that can be applied in daily instances may be:

Making moral/ ethical decisions requires sensitivity to the ethical implications of problems and situations.  It also requires practice. Having a framework for ethical decision making is essential for individuals and organizations.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

MORAL DILEMMAS: INTERTWINED BEHAVIOURS & WAYS TO NAVIGATE – CHAPTER – 01

Morality is defined as the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour (Oxford Dictionary). Effective ethics instruction is about more than distributing a list of moral guidelines; it requires educating learners on how to navigate their own moral decision-making. Learners learn to search for and evaluate their assumptions, to excavate the reasons behind those assumptions, to examine without prejudice another’s opinion and to make a thoughtful decision with confidence.

What Is Ethics:

Ethics provides a set of standards for behaviour that helps us decide how we ought to act in a range of situations. In a sense, ethics is all about making choices, and about providing reasons why we should make these choices.

Ethics is sometimes conflated or confused with other ways of making choices, including religion, law or morality. Many religions promote ethical decision-making but do not always address the full range of ethical choices that we face. Religions may also advocate or prohibit certain behaviours which may not be considered the proper domain of ethics. Many people use the terms morality and ethics interchangeably. Others reserve morality for the state of virtue while seeing ethics as a code that enables morality. Another way to think about the relationship between ethics and morality is to see ethics as providing a rational basis for morality, that is, ethics provides good reasons for why something is moral.

Traditional Interpretations Of Ethics:

There are numerous ways to think about right and wrong actions or good and bad character.  The field of ethics is traditionally divided into three areas:

Three Broad Types of Ethical Theory:

Ethical theories are often broadly divided into three types. Each of these three broad categories contains varieties of approaches to ethics, some of which share characteristics across the categories.

Consequentialist Theories

The Utilitarian Approach: Utilitarianism is one of the most common approaches to making ethical decisions, especially decisions with consequences that concern large groups of people, in part because it instructs us to weigh the different amounts of good and bad that will be produced by our action. This conforms to our feeling that some good and some bad will necessarily be the result of our action and that the best action will be that which provides the most good or does the least harm, or produces the greatest balance of good over harm.

The Egoistic Approach: One variation of the utilitarian approach is known as ethical egoism, or the ethics of self- interest. In this approach, an individual often uses utilitarian calculation to produce the greatest amount of good for him or herself. The Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand (1905-1982), who, in the book The Virtue of Selfishness (1964), argues that self-interest is a prerequisite to self-respect and to respect for others.

The Common Good Approach: The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) argued that the best society should be guided by the general will of the people which would then produce what is best for the people as a whole. This approach to ethics underscores the networked aspects of society and emphasizes respect and compassion for others, especially those who are more vulnerable.

Non Consequentialist Theories

The Duty-Based Approach: The ethical action is one taken from duty, that is, it is done precisely because it is our obligation to perform the action. Ethical obligations are the same for all rational creatures (they are universal), and knowledge of what these obligations entail is arrived at by discovering rules of behaviour that are not contradicted by reason.

The Rights Approach: This approach stipulates that the best ethical action is that which protects the ethical rights of those who are affected by the action. It emphasizes the belief that all humans have a right to dignity. The list of ethical rights is debated; many now argue that animals and other non-humans such as robots also have rights.

The Fairness or Justice Approach: The American philosopher John Rawls argued that just ethical principles are those that would be chosen by free and rational people in an initial situation of equality. This is considered fair or just because it provides a procedure for what counts as a fair action, and does not concern itself with the consequences of those actions. Fairness of starting point is the principle for what is considered just.

The Divine Command Approach: As its name suggests, this approach sees what is right as the same as what the Devine Beings command, and ethical standards are the creation of their will. Because Devine Beings are seen as omnipotent and possessed of free will, they could change what is now considered ethical, and they are not bound by any standard of right or wrong short of logical contradiction.

Agent Centred Theories

The Virtue Approach: One long-standing ethical principle argues that ethical actions should be consistent with ideal human virtues. Because virtue ethics is concerned with the entirety of a person’s life, it takes the process of education and training seriously, and emphasizes the importance of role models to our understanding of how to engage in ethical deliberation.

The Feminist Approach: This approach emphasizes the importance of the experiences of women and other marginalized groups to ethical deliberation. The principle of care as a legitimately primary ethical concern, often in opposition to the seemingly cold and impersonal justice approach. Like virtue ethics, feminist ethics concerned with the totality of human life and how this life comes to influence the way we make ethical decisions.

Interpretation of Moral/ Ethical Dilemmas

In philosophy, ethical dilemmas, also called ethical paradoxes or moral dilemmas, are situations in which an agent stands under two (or more) conflicting moral requirements, none of which overrides the other. A closely related definition characterizes ethical dilemmas as situations in which every available choice is wrong. The term is also used in a wider sense in everyday language to refer to ethical conflicts that may be resolvable, to psychologically difficult choices or to other types of difficult ethical problems.

The crucial features of a moral dilemma are these: the agent can do each of the actions; but the agent cannot do both (or all) of the actions. What is common to the cases in a moral dilemma (or ethical dilemma) is conflict. The agent thus seems condemned to moral failure; no matter what he/she does, he/she will do something wrong (or fail to do something that he/she ought to do).

When one of the conflicting requirements overrides the other, we have a conflict but not a genuine moral dilemma. So, in order to have a genuine moral dilemma it must also be true that neither of the conflicting requirements is overridden. What makes these questions dilemmas is an individual’s definition of right and wrong or good and bad. scenarios. Some ways in which such ethical dilemmas may be addressed are:

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Moral Dilemma Questions & Common Situations, Approaches For Ethical Decision-Making, Importance of Understanding Moral Dilemmas, Framework for Making Moral/ Ethical Decisions)

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

DECISION INTELLIGENCE FRAMEWORKS: THE OODA LOOP & SEAL – CHAPTER 02

***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Decision Intelligence and its meaning, The OODA Loop, How The OODA Loop Works: The Four Steps, Success Of The OODA Loop)

Link to Chapter 01:

DECISION INTELLIGENCE FRAMEWORKS: THE OODA LOOP & SEAL – CHAPTER 01

Uses Of The OODA Loop

In general, military planning models are often applied to uses outside of their original context due to their effectiveness in extreme situations. The OODA loop has been adapted to become an important concept in various fields such as business, game theory, information security, law enforcement, litigation, marketing and strategy. Professionals find this compelling because of its common-sense approach to decision-making and its emphasis on staying competitive.

With technology being used everywhere and more emphasis being placed on a company’s ability to collect feedback and analyze competition, this method is now a common approach applied in organizations. In business, OODA loops typically examine what is happening externally and how results are performing to become more agile. Similarly, an organization with a security operations centre (SOC), computer emergency readiness team (CERT) or computer security incident response team (CSIRT) may use an OODA loop cycle to develop an organization’s incident response plan.

Additionally, due to the growth of data analytics in business, the OODA loop is a popular method for handling an influx of constantly emerging information. Companies can achieve better situational awareness when they implement the observe and orient steps to organize data in a way that accurately depicts the business environment. Once the data is placed in context, they can make smarter organizational decisions and actions.

Examples Of The OODA Loop

In its simplest form, the OODA loop is employed by all individuals every day when making a decision.

More complex, higher-stakes versions of the OODA loop in everyday life can be seen when creating a retirement savings plan or buying a home.

Alternatives To The OODA Loop

A few ideas that can be combined with the OODA loop include:

Plan, do, check, act (PDCA) cycle- This is a model geared towards continuous improvement that is also broken into four parts. The process starts by identifying a problem and gathering relevant data to the cause of the problem. Then, this information is used to develop and implement a solution. The results are then confirmed, or checked, before documented and used to make recommendations for further PDCA cycles.

Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis– This is a framework used in business to identify and analyze any internal or external factors that could affect the success of a project.

Getting things done (GTD) method– This is a time management model that helps organizations break larger projects into smaller, actionable tasks. The GTD method is a five step process that is also sometimes referred to by the steps: collect, process, organize, plan and do. All material should be gathered, analyzed and categorized before being transforming into an action plan that is then carried out.

Objectives and Key Results– OKRs are frequently set and evaluated continuously during the project lifecycle to make sure everything gets done on time. They also act as future references to monitor how well you executed your projects.

Porter’s Five Forces– Porter’s Five Forces is a model that identifies and analyzes five competitive forces that shape every industry and helps determine an industry’s weaknesses and strengths. Five Forces analysis is frequently used to identify an industry’s structure to determine corporate strategy and in decision making. 

SOAR Analysis– This is a framework for identifying Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results. It works in any business involved in any marketplace. Unlike some other frameworks, SOAR marries up fact finding about the company and position, alongside the desires of the stakeholders to aid better decision intelligence.

Decision Intelligence and Technology

During the recent decade, we saw a proliferation of data lake or data hub technologies. In spite of substantial innovations in dealing with three V’s of big data (Volume, Variety, and Velocity), we have yet to see any noticeable impact on the decision-action capability of organizations.

That does not imply that handling and managing data is unimportant for decision intelligence, however, we can safely conclude that it need not be the first step and some crucial piece is missing in crafting a decision intelligence system. A well-designed decision intelligence system is less dependent on data as one might think, as it can help make effective decisions even with limited data and can tolerate errors and inconsistencies as well as deal with high degrees of uncertainty.

Decision making being a cognitive function, we need a deeper understanding of it, so that we can better augment and support it by intelligent automation. Without this, it will be impossible to build an effective decision intelligence system. A decision intelligence system must be built around a sound decision making framework. Human and artificial agents can then collaborate following the structure and discipline of the framework.

The purpose and scope of decision intelligence automation is to implement artificial intelligence agents operating by the directives of a decision making framework. The least a framework does is to provide a structure and discipline without which an organization is bound to stay at the lowest level of decision intelligence maturity.

Decision Intelligence Frameworks Today

Early frameworks assumed that decision-making occurs at conscious level of processing guided by rational behavior. Today’s understanding of decision-making theories is much more nuanced:-

The SEAL Decision Model- Evolved specifically for designing human-machine collaborative decision intelligence systems, this stands for sense, explore, act, and learn. Though still transformational in nature, SEAL is designed to support and augment fundamental cognitive processes of human decision making rather than imposing on people to learn unfamiliar paradigms.

On first glance, SEAL may appear similar to OODA, since four elements of OODA can be loosely mapped to elements of SEAL as follows:

Human-Machine Collaboration In Decision Intelligence

The details under these elements are different because of the intent of SEAL to achieve a man machine symbiosis by reducing cognitive burden of decision makers and due to its continuous business optimization focus by explicit incorporation of feedback loops and learning. Some of these differences are:

Unlike Observe in OODA which is focused on sensing the current situation with the reactive intent, Sense in SEAL is proactive by design and predicts future situations that qualify as opportunities early so that organizations have ample time to become ready to react.

Sense agents may reveal multiple opportunities from the same snapshot of observation, thereby, requiring branching of subsequent activity to address them concurrently. Sense in SEAL requires active collaboration among human and machine agents as neither of them on their own can handle massive amount of data and make sense out of it.

Selected alternatives (similar to OODA hypotheses) move to the Action phase where actions are actually executed either manually or via a process automation substrate.

Learning happens at multiple levels – for adaption and fine tuning of predictive models and man-machine interaction. At a macro level, it is about understanding and improving the efficacy of action alternatives executed during ACT phase.

In summary, while OODA and SEAL are similar in emphasizing that a disciplined and facts based approach to decision making is essential for sustainable success in any endeavor, SEAL provides a comprehensive framework for implementing a human-machine decision intelligence system.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

DECISION INTELLIGENCE FRAMEWORKS: THE OODA LOOP & SEAL – CHAPTER 01

All of us, without exception, would love to tame the future and tilt odds in our favor all the time. This lofty aspiration and our incessant effort toward making right choices is what sets us apart from animal species. Decision making is a basic cognitive process of human behavior. Far from perfect, our prowess for decision making stands exposed more than ever in the hyper connected and rapidly changing world we live in.

Decision Intelligence: How can it help?

There is hardly any organization today that does not aspire to power their decisions and actions with intelligence. Enough evidence exists that those who can harness their organizational intelligence and align it to desired outcomes accrue a substantial advantage.

Over the decades of automation, significant strides have been made in codifying human experiential knowledge as well as extracting hidden knowledge from transactional data footprints.

The purview of decision intelligence is to explore outcome-focused and human-in-the-loop approaches to decision automation. A decision intelligence system is a man-machine collaborative system designed to enable and mature decision-action capability in an organization. A decision intelligence system plays a dual role:

The methodical design of a decision intelligence system must hinge around a framework — a mental model of decision making. The framework not only helps in defining scope and boundary of the system but determines the extent to which the system can be useful and in what situations.

A Story

In 1961, Col.  John Boyd wrote “Aerial Attack Study”, which spoke about the best dogfighting tactics. In dogfights (close-range aerial battles), fighter pilots need to move at high speeds, avoid enemies while tracking them and keeping a contextual knowledge of objectives, terrains, fuel and other variables. His OODA loop was a concept designed for rational thinking in such chaotic situations.

He said that ambiguity will always be there. Our inability to properly make sense of our changing reality is the bigger hindrance. When circumstances change, we often fail to shift our perspective and continue to try to see the world as we feel it should be. Most important thing is to orient – be connected to reality and act accordingly.

While this concept has been used extensively in corporates, sports and of course military outfits, it can also be used just as well by individuals for critical thinking & effective decision making to beat the competition.

The OODA Loop

The OODA loop (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) is a four-step approach to decision-making that focuses on filtering available information, putting it in context and quickly making the most appropriate decision while also understanding that changes can be made as more data becomes available.

The strategy is applicable at an individual level as well as an organizational level. It is particularly useful in scenarios where competition is involved and where the ability to react to changing circumstances faster than an opponent leads to an advantage. Many modern environments can be described as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, or VUCA. Surviving and winning in this type of situation rests upon making better decisions. However, improving the quality of decision-making is something most organizations fail to do.

For example, if a company continues to make choices that do not see a positive return, they are failing to learn from their experiences. The OODA loop acknowledges this habit and provides an approach help make improvements.

OODA Loop Related Terminology

Before the OODA loop can be fully understood, a few related concepts need to be introduced which will aid in understanding it better:

1. Maneuver warfare– This is a strategy used in the military that emphasizes disrupting the enemy’s decision-making skills in order to defeat them. Maneuver warfare revolves around the ideas of surprise and deception. The concept of the OODA loop was derived from the strategy of maneuver warfare.
2. Mental models– These are representations or explanations of human behavior that exist on a personal, internal level. A person can generate a mental model to understand their thought processes, decisions and consequences. Mental models are a part of the orientation step of the OODA loop.
3. Situational awareness– This is the comprehension of all environmental stimuli. It involves perceiving all components of a situation, understanding what they mean and using them to make future judgements. Achieving situational awareness is crucial for most decision-making processes, including the OODA loop.
4. Reaction time– This refers to the time that elapses between a stimulus and the response given to that stimulus. A primary goal in the OODA loop is to minimize an individual or organization’s reaction time.

How The OODA Loop Works: The Four Steps

Similar to other problem-solving methods, the OODA loop is an interactive, iterative process that entails repeating the cycle, observing and measuring results, reviewing and revising the ­­initial decision and advancing to the next step. While the process is not always simple or linear, the four separate steps involved may be explained in organizational context or individual context as follows:

1. Observe: The first step is to identify the problem or threat and gain an overall understanding of the internal and external environment. In the corporate world, this can be equated to data gathering, where all information on the situation (organizational state, competitors, market, etc.,) is collected. The key point here is to recognize that the world is complex. All data is a snapshot in time and must be treated as such. Therefore, entities must gather whatever information is available as quickly as possible in order to be prepared to make decisions based on it.
2. Orient: This involves reflecting on what has been found during observations and considering what should be done next. It requires a significant level of situational awareness and understanding to make a conscious decision. Since some decisions are unconscious, or instinctual, this step involves considering what and why decisions are made prior to choosing a course of action. When applied on an individual level, this step can be done by creating mental models or mental rehearsal drills to place information into narratives that shape judgement. In organizational applications, situational models can be created with machine learning (ML) tools to identify potential outcomes while removing any bias.
3. Decide: This phase makes suggestions towards an action or response plan, taking into consideration all the potential outcomes. This can be accomplished through meetings or discussions that are focused around creating a roadmap for the entire organization.
4. Act: This pertains to carrying out the decision and related changes that need to be made in response to the decision. This step may also include any testing that is required before officially carrying out an action.

These phases have been broken out for the purposes of explanation, but in some real world scenarios they might happen in a fraction of a second. The four steps of the OODA Loop work together in a cycle.

Success Of the OODA Loop

Factor 01

One key to the success of the OODA loop is to make it as short as possible, minimizing reaction times in high-stakes situations. In the OODA loop’s simplest form, there is only one stimulus and one response, but that is not always the case. Hick’s Law can be applied to the reaction time of an OODA loop that has more than one stimulus or response, stating that when there are multiple options available in response to a stimulus, reaction time is slowed down.

Factor 02

The ability to make decisions faster than an opponent is important, but it is not only about speed. Tempo is also critical as the ability to rapidly speed up and slow down can generate unpredictability. Being unpredictable makes it difficult for opponents to understand and orientate themselves to what will happen next. Cycling through an OODA loop with more tempo than an opponent gives an organization more control of the environment and a better chance of succeeding.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Uses of the OODA Loop, Examples in Business, Alternatives, Decision Intelligence and Technology, Human-Machine Collaboration In Decision Intelligence)

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

HENRI FAYOL VS ABRAHAM MASLOW: BEHAVIOURAL PERSPECTIVE ON LEADERSHIP

As our career progresses, we may find we do fewer technical tasks and spend more time guiding a team or planning strategy. While that’s often a given today, in the 19th century most companies promoted the best technicians. But Henri Fayol recognized that the skills that made them good at their jobs did not necessarily make them good managers.

Who Was Henri Fayol?

Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management identified the skills that were needed to manage well. While inspiring much of today’s management theory, they offer tips that we can still implement in our lives and organizations. Fayol also created a list of the five Primary Functions of Management, which go hand in hand with the Principles.

What Is Administrative Theory?

Fayol called managerial skills “administrative functions.” In his 1916 book, “Administration Industrielle et Générale,” he shared his experiences of managing a workforce. Fayol’s book – and his 14 Principles of Management – helped to form what became known as Administrative Theory. It looks at the organization from the top down, and sets out steps for managers to get the best from employees and to run a business efficiently.

Caveat: . . . . . . . . . . Administrative Theory is characterized by people “on the ground” who share personal experiences, improve practices, and help others to run an organization. This contrasts with the Scientific Management Ideas led by Frederick Taylor , which experimented with how individuals work to boost productivity.

The 14 Principles of Management: A Revisit

By focusing on administrative over technical skills, the Principles are some of the earliest examples of treating management as a profession. They are:

What are Fayol’s Five Functions of Management?

While Fayol’s 14 Principles look at the detail of day-to-day management, his Five Functions of Management provide the big picture of how managers should spend their time. They are:

Is Fayolism Still Relevant Today?

Fayol highlighted the differences between managerial and technical skills. What’s more, he was one of the first to recognize that “manager” is a profession – one whose skills need to be researched, taught and developed. We only have to look at the language he used to see that Fayol was writing over 100 years ago. For example, he refers to employees as “men.”

But, without the contributions of these pioneers, such as Fayol, we would probably be teaching industrial engineering, sociology, economics, or perhaps ergonomics to those who aspire to manage. To be doing so would push us back to the 19th century, when technical know-how reigned supreme as a path to managerial responsibility. When we look closer, we discover that many of Fayol’s points are fresh and relevant. Such as:

Some of these ideas may seem a bit obvious, but at the time they were ground breaking. And the fact that they’ve stuck shows just how well Fayol’s Principles work.

Criticism Of Fayol’s Principles Of Management

That’s not to say that everyone is a fan of Fayol’s Administrative Theory. Some detractors claim that:

The Interlinks Between the Theories Of Henry Fayol & Abraham Maslow

Fayol’s perspective of the overall success of an organization was to include the formulation of goals, strategies and plans and to work through others to ensure that these activities were implement. These principles also had to be supplemented and supported by discipline and anticipation. Fayol also believed that management could be taught and was concerned about improving the quality of management.

Maslow’s theory of motivation, on the other hand, took a more psychological approach, which focused on employee motivation. This theory proposed that within every person lied a hierarchy of five needs – starting with physiological needs and ascending to safety, social, esteem and finally, self-actualization needs. Hence, in order to motivate a person, Maslow stated that lowest level needs must be substantially satisfied before the next level can be activated and so on.

Application of Fayol’s Concepts

Fayol believed that the responsibility of general management is to lead the enterprise toward its objective by making effective and efficient use of available resources.

Fayol’s five functions are the rules of his administrative doctrine. He had shown sustained effort that his administrative principles could be applied to all social organizations from the family to the state. He stressed that the 14 principles must be flexible and adaptable to the situation at hand. The principles of management were aimed at helping managers manage more effectively.

Application of Maslow’s Concepts

In Maslow’s theory, it is assumed that when an individual has the knowledge and skills to perform his or her job, a manager can influence their motivation to achieve levels of excellence. Maslow’s five needs are arranged in a hierarchy of importance that can be described as prepotency. The higher-level needs are not important and will not manifest till lower-needs are met and satisfied. This hierarchy can also be divided into two orders of needs. The lower-order needs are physiological, safety and social concerns, and the higher-order needs are esteem and self-actualization concerns.

Comparisons

Fayol’s ideas of the five functions and 14 principles are good frameworks for managers to follow if they want to manage more efficiently and effectively. Maslow’s ideas on how an individual behaves in a working environment has helped us understand the importance of motivation complementing administration from a managerial point of view. These two concepts complement each other as they help managers better manage administratively and psychologically. It depicted how effectively and efficiently a workplace should function and how employees should be motivated to commit and perform at their best. Hence, Fayol and Maslow’s ideas and concepts have indeed helped us understand the job of getting things done through people.

The Interlinks: Management, Leadership And Transformational Leadership

Management is about the mind. It is the manager’s job to stay focused on the task and goals, to set action plans, thereby helping followers deal with complexity. Leadership is more about the heart, or staying focused on the people and their individual characteristics, creating a shared vision that helps followers to participate in a change process. Transformational leadership is about breaking down resistance to change. This is done both through “assigning meaning to change” and through the change within the leader (him)/(her)self.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

THE DUNNING KRUGER EFFECT: INTERPLAY OF BEHAVIORS- CHAPTER 02

***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Meaning & Interpretation, Historical Origins, Types Of Information: The Ignorance Of Ignorance, The Dunning-Kruger Effect In The Workplace and In Our Lives)

Link to Chapter 01:

THE DUNNING KRUGER EFFECT: INTERPLAY OF BEHAVIORS- CHAPTER 01

Behaviors That Initiate The Dunning-Kruger Effect

How To Steer Away From The Dunning Kruger Effect

People can learn they are incompetent . . . by becoming competent. Thinking of meta-cognition again, we may divide it into two: General and domain specific.

If we can hone our general meta-cognition, we can ensure that we do not fall for the Dunning-Kruger effect in whatever domain. Every time we think – “I am above average, of course” – an alarm bell needs to go off in our mind. How do we know we are above average? Getting to know our peers and what they are doing can help. If we can distinguish between the competent and those who are not, maybe we do know what we are doing. If not, that should be enough of a warning to dive deeper into whatever we are learning – switching to specific meta-cognition.

Another antidote is the Stoic art of premeditatio malorum, or pre-meditation of evils. Assuming we have failed, or found out we are objectively bad at something – how do we tend to explain it? Would we call it just a bad day, or something deeper? Depending on how many times we face this failure in real life (a proxy for competence), the answer ought to transition from “just a bad day” to “I need to improve”. Here are a few other things we can do:

Countering The Dunning-Kruger Effect In The Workplace

People are social animals and do not like to be exposed as simply wrong, so the best way to handle people is to help them to understand that things are more complicated than they thought through their own reasoning. That is, they must realize for themselves that maybe there is more to the situation or problem than they initially thought. Some ways we can do this are:

A) With our  Subordinates- Appropriate Coaching Style:

We can adopt a coaching style to give them feedback on their ideas and work progress. This style should not be critical but should help them to explore potential issues with their ideas. Over time, team members will develop a deeper understanding of typical issues that might arise, and a set of tools and strategies for analyzing situations for potential problems that might occur on their own.

B) With our Superiors- Managing Up: We want our superiors to realize for themselves that their initial ideas may be more complex and fraught with difficulties than they originally imagined. This will involve:

Domain Dependence Of The Dunning Kruger Effect

The effect does not show up everywhere. One big caveat is the domain under consideration. In some domains, knowledge does imply competence. For example, someone who understands inferential logic will be a competent logician. In other domains, competence depends on other factors too, like physical skill. For example, soccer coaches probably know what they are doing, but can we imagine Sir Alex Ferguson playing a 90 minute game now? He is not competent at playing soccer. Despite this, he has the knowledge to realize when one of his players is making a mistake in the game.

In domains where knowledge implies competence, lack of skill implies both the inability to perform competently as well as the inability to recognize competence, and thus are also the domains in which the incompetent are likely to be unaware of their lack of skill. Or, the domains in which the Dunning Kruger effect runs rabid. If we cannot serve in tennis, we probably don’t think we are Wimbledon material. But again, that does not stop some people from thinking they can win a point off Serena Williams.

Finally, in order for the incompetent to overestimate themselves, they must satisfy a minimal threshold of knowledge, theory, or experience that suggests to themselves that they can generate correct answers.

The Paradox Of Overcoming Ignorance

How do we get someone—or ourselves—to look for something we cannot even see?  This is the paradox of trying to overcome our own ignorance: The very thing that would help us see our mistakes is the same thing that would keep us from making them in the first place. We cannot reason with a conspiracy theorist precisely because they did not form their beliefs with reason.

Part of the problem is that there is comfort in the feeling of knowing. People do not like uncertainty. And so settling on a belief helps us feel like we have made more sense of the world. When we can make sense of the world, we feel safe. Whether that belief is true or not does not matter—it just has to give us some relief from the anxiety of not knowing.

Also, it turns out it is not helpful to be direct with them for how stupid they are. Being too open to people simply causes them to become more defensive and double-down on their challenged beliefs, not relinquish them.

Conclusion

Humility is an important value. In fact, the Dunning-Kruger Effect suggests that humility can be highly practical. By intentionally underestimating our understanding of things, not only do we open up more opportunities to learn and grow, but we also foster a more realistic view of ourselves, and prevent ourselves from looking like a narcissist around others. Now, when we talk about the Dunning-Kruger effect we seem to (ironically enough) believe that it doesn’t apply to us. But the truth is, every single one of us has been a victim of it, at one point or the other, and our denial is the very proof it. We can find many examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect just by imploring ourselves, for example our shortcoming when it comes to accepting differing opinions or facts that directly contradict our views stems from our belief that we already know the “correct” opinion on a particular matter.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

THE DUNNING KRUGER EFFECT: INTERPLAY OF BEHAVIORS- CHAPTER 01

If we were asked to rate our driving ability on a scale of 1 to 10, how would we score ourselves? Maybe we are not amongst the best drivers in the world, but we probably do not believe we are the worst. In fact, we probably rate ourselves as being a little better than the average driver. The problem with this is that most people rate themselves as being a better driver than the average person. This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where most people overrate their abilities, with the greatest overestimation coming from those with the lowest skills.

Perhaps what’s even more amazing is that the English philosopher Bertrand Russell said this long before the advent of the internet. Today, due to the joys of social media, we are regularly exposed to legions of people who believe they know what they are talking about when they do not. And, indeed, as Russell pointed out, the more clueless these people are, the more confident in their pronouncements they seem to be. People who are bad at something do believe they are good at it, and people who are good at it do believe they are bad at it. Amateurs are overconfident and experts are under confident. Newbies believe they have got it all figured out and the weathered veterans understand that nothing is really known for sure.

What Is The Dunning-Kruger Effect?

The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias characterized by overconfidence in one’s ability on a particular subject. The gap between perceived ability and actual ability is typically blind to the individual concerned, but often not to others around them. The Dunning-Kruger effect was first recognized in David Dunning and Justin Kruger’s 1999 study “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”. This gap between perceived performance and actual performance can be best shown using the Dunning-Kruger Curve.

The Curve shows that people with zero experience know they are incompetent. However, those with just a little experience vastly overestimate their competence. As people get further experience, they become more aware of the gaps in their knowledge and their confidence decreases until they reach the point of average competence. After this point, as their expertise increases, so does their confidence.

The scariest thing about this effect is that we won’t even realize we are there. An important point to realize is that the only people who tend to underestimate their abilities are those that are actually the most competent and experienced. This is often called the burden of expertise.

Similar Falacies – Historical Origins

Anna Karenina principle (Leo Tolstoy- 1877): The Anna Karenina principle states that a deficiency in any one of a number of factors dooms an endeavor to failure. Consequently, a successful endeavor (subject to this principle) is one for which every possible deficiency has been avoided.

In other words: happy families share a common set of attributes which lead to happiness, while any of a variety of attributes can cause an unhappy family.

Aristotle’s version:

Much earlier, Aristotle states the same principle in the Nicomachean Ethics (Book 2):-

The Opposite of Dunning-Kruger:

The opposite of the Dunning-Kruger Effect to some degree is Imposter Syndrome.

Here, you have high-ability but believe your actual ability is very low. In a nutshell, while your ability is high, you feel like a fraud or believe that you are faking competence in some way.

Types Of Information: The Ignorance Of Ignorance

There are four types of information:

The unknown unknowns are where the Dunning-Kruger effect comes into play in the worst way. It is our tendency to overestimate our own knowledge/skills/competence and underestimate our own ignorance. The Dunning-Kruger Effect goes beyond ignorance. It presents a meta-layer of ignorance—the ignorance of our own ignorance. And that is what Russell says is so wrong with the world: that we predictably overestimate our knowledge and abilities in a way that causes more errors and graver mistakes.

Some more instances are:

We fail to consider that we also fall victim to this blindspot. We have blind spots when it comes to our emotional awareness as well.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect In The Workplace

In many domains in life and work, success and satisfaction depend on knowledge, wisdom, or savvy in knowing which rules to follow and which strategies to pursue. People also differ widely in the knowledge and strategies they apply in these domains. When people adopt incorrect strategies, not only do they reach wrong conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it. Some situations that arise may be:-

Impact  Of Dunning-Kruger In The Workplace

Impact  Of Dunning-Kruger In Our Daily Lives

A) People think they are better than they are: They think they are better than they actually are, not that they are better than the best. In some cases it is another behavior that is in play – confidence. The perceived ability therefore is equal to how great their confidence may be. People with almost zero knowledge don’t think they “know everything.” They think they know more than they do. It’s still less than what competent people know.

B) People do not recognize competence when they see it: They do not recognize the real great people. Therefore, they cannot learn from them, cannot improve themselves, and are destined to stay as they are. Meta-cognition is this ability to think about and judge our thinking. It’s a skill separate from how well we learn (cognition).

C) People do not learn from their peers: One of the ways people gain insight into their own competence is by watching the behavior of others. Because of their difficulty recognizing competence in others, they will be unable to use information about the choices and performances of others to form more accurate impressions of their own ability.

For success to occur, many things must go right: The person must be skilled, apply effort, and perhaps be a bit lucky. For failure to occur, the lack of any one of these components is sufficient. The problem with failure is that it is difficult to figure out the root cause. Because of this, even if people receive feedback that points to a lack of skill, they may attribute it to some other factor.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Behaviors That Initiate The Dunning-Kruger Effect, How To Steer Away From It, Countering The Dunning-Kruger Effect, Domain Dependence, Paradox Of Overcoming Ignorance) Link to Chapter -02:

THE DUNNING KRUGER EFFECT: INTERPLAY OF BEHAVIORS- CHAPTER 02

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa