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Article
Publication date: 16 March 2021

Abdulfattah Yaghi and Nizar Alabed

The study adapted the Career Decision Making Difficulties Questionnaire for the Arab world. The purpose of the study was to test a popular but scientifically unverified belief…

Abstract

Purpose

The study adapted the Career Decision Making Difficulties Questionnaire for the Arab world. The purpose of the study was to test a popular but scientifically unverified belief that people who were employed could experience less CDD.

Design/methodology/approach

Career Decision-Making Difficulties Questionnaire was administered to a sample of 500 university students to analyze CDD among full-time and part-time students and examine whether employment status determines to what extent they experience these difficulties. Univariate and bivariate analyses were used.

Findings

Employment status had no statistically significant effect on students' perceptions of CDD; 6 demographic variables were significantly correlated with CDD (gender, age, income, university grade-point average, satisfaction with the current major and social status); and students had dysfunctional beliefs about the career decision-making process, lack self-awareness, and had inconsistent information about internal and external difficulties.

Research limitations/implications

Universities should design adequate career interventions before and after graduation and employers should implement human resource policies that reduce CDD and their negative impact on the workplace. Other methods of data collection and analysis could also be useful in the future, such as interviews. While scope of the study was acceptable, comparing countries and public versus private institutions could produce valuable findings.

Practical implications

The study tested and validated ACDDQ which could be used as diagnostic instrument to design career interventions and training programs. Employers need to allocate resources in the recruitment process to help potential recruits to understand the nature of work, processes, and requirements. Educators need to provide better coaching and career education for students, especially those in senior years.

Social implications

Understanding career decision-making difficulties and factors that influence them will influence long-term human resource management, especially productivity, turn over and job satisfaction.

Originality/value

The study examined the important issue of difficulties in making career decisions among two groups of university students. With more employees go back to college for more education, it was not clear in the literature how career decisions might differ between the two groups. The issue was under-researched, especially within Arab countries.

Details

Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, vol. 11 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2042-3896

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 May 2005

Gianfranco Walsh and Vincent‐Wayne Mitchell

The puropse of this article is to identify consumers who experience difficulty in making their buying decisions, especially in the face of variety of choice, proliferation of…

5850

Abstract

Purpose

The puropse of this article is to identify consumers who experience difficulty in making their buying decisions, especially in the face of variety of choice, proliferation of brand choice, small inter‐brand differences, brand counterfeiting, marketing communication overload and so on.

Design/methodology/approach

A questionnaire administered to 264 consumers in north Germany used a scale developed by the authors at the University of Hanover in 2002 to measure three types of difficulty in marketplace decision making. Those relate to similarity among product‐service offerings available, information overload, and marketing communications that lack clarity. Data collected were analysed by ANOVA and hierarchical cluster analysis.

Findings

ANOVA suggested that high levels of marketplace decision difficulty were characteristic of older, less well‐educated female consumers. Subsequent cluster analysis identified four distinct and meaningful consumer types, in terms of “marketplace decision difficulty” or MPDD.

Research limitations/implications

The present study was restricted to a single large city in one European country, and one of the test statistics was perhaps too rigorous for useful conclusions in the case of some variables, but the findings do contain clear managerial implications and future research developments are proposed.

Practical implications

Marketing strategists should find it useful to understand the demographics of consumers who are likely to experience difficulty in making marketplace decisions – for instance, to segment audiences for their marketing communications, and to vary style and content accordingly.

Originality/value

This study offers a practical market segmentation scheme, based on demographic influences on decision‐making behaviour.

Details

Marketing Intelligence & Planning, vol. 23 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-4503

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 May 2019

Carl-Christian Trönnberg and Sven Hemlin

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of pension fund managers investment thinking when confronted with challenging investment decisions. The study focuses…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of pension fund managers investment thinking when confronted with challenging investment decisions. The study focuses on the theoretical question of how dual thinking processes in experts’ investment decision-making emerge. This question has attracted interest in economic psychology but has not yet been answered. Here, it is explored in the context of pension funds.

Design/methodology/approach

The sample included 22 pension fund managers. The authors explored their decision-making by applying the critical incident interview technique, which entailed collecting investment decisions that fund managers retrieved from recent memory (Flanagan, 1954). Questions concerned the investment situation, the decision-making process and the challenges and uncertainties the fund managers faced.

Findings

Many of the 61 critical incidents examined concerned challenging (mostly stock) investments based on extensive analysis (e.g. reliance on external analysts for advice; analysis of massive amounts of hard company and stock market information; scrutiny of company reports and personal meetings with CEOs). However, fund managers to a high degree based their decisions on soft information judgments such as experience and qualitative judgements of teams. The authors found heuristics, intuitive thinking, biases (sunk cost effects) and social influences in investment decision-making.

Research limitations/implications

The sample is small and not randomly selected.

Practical implications

The authors suggest anti-bias training and better acquaintance with human forecasting limitations for pension fund managers.

Originality/value

Pension fund managers’ investment thinking has not previously been investigated. The authors show the types of investment situations in which analytical and intuitive thinking and biases occur.

Details

Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, vol. 14 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1755-4179

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 February 1998

Jan Corcoran and Fiona McLean

Although the public sector has become a major employer of management consultants, no research has previously been undertaken to investigate the purchase of management consultants…

2034

Abstract

Although the public sector has become a major employer of management consultants, no research has previously been undertaken to investigate the purchase of management consultants in the public sector context. Outlines an investigation into the purchase of management consultants by government departments, focusing specifically on the selection decision. The UK and Australia were examined to ensure that the findings were not merely local phenomena. Research focused on the public sector decision makers’ guiding procurement principle, value for money, and the criteria and information sources both used and desired to assist the purchase decision. It was found that there was widespread and relatively uniform understanding of the procurement principle, value for money, although there appeared to be a lack of connection between this principle and procurement practice. Public sector decision makers also believed that they had adequate although not satisfactory access to information upon which to base their decisions while, significantly, it was revealed that these decision makers did not believe the selection decision for management consultants was, overall, difficult. Concludes that the implications of this research are twofold. First, it highlights the issues of “corporate memory” and information management, and their impact upon informed decision making, and secondly it questions the applicability of private sector research to public sector practice.

Details

International Journal of Public Sector Management, vol. 11 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3558

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 12 November 2019

Hubert Janos Kiss, Ismael Rodriguez-Lara and Alfonso Rosa-Garcia

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how response time in a laboratory experiment on bank runs affects withdrawal decisions.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how response time in a laboratory experiment on bank runs affects withdrawal decisions.

Design/methodology/approach

In the authors’ setup, the bank has no fundamental problems, depositors decide sequentially whether to keep the money in the bank or to withdraw, and they may observe previous decisions depending on the information structure. The authors consider two levels of difficulty of decision-making conditional on the presence of strategic dominance and strategic uncertainty. The authors hypothesize that the more difficult the decision, the longer is the response time, and the predictive power of response time depends on difficulty.

Findings

The authors find that response time is longer in information sets with strategic uncertainty compared to those without (as expected), but the authors do not find such relationship when considering strategic dominance (contrary to the hypothesis). Response time correlates negatively with optimal decisions in information sets with a dominant strategy (contrary to the expectation) and also when decisions are obvious in the absence of strategic uncertainty (in line with the hypothesis). When there is strategic uncertainty, the authors find suggestive evidence that response time predicts optimal decisions.

Research limitations/implications

Being a laboratory experiment, it is questionable if depositors in real life behave similarly (external validity).

Practical implications

Since episodes of bank runs are characterized by strategic uncertainty, the result that under strategic uncertainty, longer response time leads to better decisions suggests that suspension of convertibility is a useful tool to curb banking panics.

Originality/value

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first study concerning the relationship between response time and the optimality of decisions in a bank-run game.

Details

Review of Behavioral Finance, vol. 12 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1940-5979

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 2014

Anna Meczynska, Roman Kmieciak, Anna Michna and Iwona Flajszok

This paper aims to propose and present a decision-making support method for poorly structured problems in schools, using the example of one of the most important and difficult…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to propose and present a decision-making support method for poorly structured problems in schools, using the example of one of the most important and difficult decisions that principals face: terminating a teacher's employment.

Design/methodology/approach

A literature review was conducted, along with observations and interviews with 30 experienced principals, in order to identify decisions made by Polish principals. In order to sort non-programmable decisions according to their importance and difficulty, data were collected from 377 principals. Opinions from two groups, consisting of 22 and 25 experts, respectively, were collected in order to identify and order a set of criteria for making a specified non-programmable decision.

Findings

The four following areas of school activities were distinguished: finances, teaching and care, internal processes, and development of organisation. Within these categories, 126 decisions made by principals were identified, 96 of which were non-programmable. One of the most difficult and important non-programmable decisions was related to the termination of a teacher's employment. In order to support decisions regarding a teacher's dismissal, 44 criteria with different importance levels were identified.

Practical implications

Principals can use the method proposed in this paper, as it increases the rationality and objectivity of making a dismissal decision. The method can also be adapted for other difficult non-programmable decisions.

Originality/value

The expert opinion method might be useful for solving poorly structured problems in the management of educational institutions. As far as it can be ascertained, no previous empirical studies have identified and ranked the most important and difficult non-programmable decisions facing principals.

Details

Baltic Journal of Management, vol. 9 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5265

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 July 2005

W Suto, I Clare and A Holland

This paper provides some guidance on how recent research into decision‐making capacity can be used in clinical practice to maximise financial independence among adults with…

Abstract

This paper provides some guidance on how recent research into decision‐making capacity can be used in clinical practice to maximise financial independence among adults with learning disabilities. Its key messages are (i) that capacity is changeable rather than fixed and static, and (ii) that an assessment of capacity is just a starting point for identifying and enhancing a person's strengths and addressing weaknesses. The first half of the paper contains an overview of some recent developments in social policy, capacity legislation and research. We highlight some of the most important issues for clinicians and other health and social care practitioners to consider. In the second half, a case study is discussed. We outline some potential interventions for maximising financial capacity in different ways, as well as identifying some broad strategies for addressing difficulties in decision‐making.

Details

Tizard Learning Disability Review, vol. 10 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1359-5474

Article
Publication date: 3 July 2009

Chanthika Pornpitakpan

The purpose of this paper is to examine the cross‐cultural generalization of the effect of option choice framing on product option choices and other managerial and psychological…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the cross‐cultural generalization of the effect of option choice framing on product option choices and other managerial and psychological variables.

Design/methodology/approach

The experiment employs 124 Singaporean and 96 Thai working adults, who add options to a base model or delete options from a full model in a condominium purchase scenario. Hypotheses are derived from the different weights for monetary losses and utility gains from adding options vs utility losses and monetary gains from deleting options.

Findings

For both Singaporeans and Thais, compared to additive framing, subtractive framing results in a higher number of options chosen, higher total option prices, higher expected product prices and higher perceived product prestige. For Thais, compared to additive framing, subtractive framing also results in lower perceived decision difficulty and shorter decision time. For Singaporeans, compared to additive framing, subtractive framing results in shorter decision time and higher perceived value.

Research limitations/implications

The option choice task is a scenario, not a real‐life choice task in which participants have to spend real money.

Practical implications

Subtractive option choice framing should be used rather than additive option choice framing. However, in recession time, the use of subtractive framing may backfire because consumers perceive the product as more expensive than its counterpart presented under additive framing, thus lowering their purchase intention of the product. In addition, whenever marketers want consumers to perceive the starting price as low, the price of a base model should be emphasized as opposed to the price of a full model.

Originality/value

This study examines an important issue – whether the superiority of subtractive framing over additive framing reported in past research is valid in other cultures that are very different from American and whether it is valid in another product category. The results qualify past findings that people give more weight to utility losses than monetary losses.

Details

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, vol. 21 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-5855

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 29 September 2022

K.G. Priyashantha, W.E. Dahanayake and M.N. Maduwanthi

Research has been conducted to investigate the factors that influence career indecision. This study attempted to synthesize empirical research on career indecision to (1) find the…

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Abstract

Purpose

Research has been conducted to investigate the factors that influence career indecision. This study attempted to synthesize empirical research on career indecision to (1) find the common determinants over the last two decades and (2) find the factors/areas that need to be addressed for future research on career indecision.

Design/methodology/approach

This study used the systematic literature review (SLR) methodology and the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Following the predetermined inclusion criteria, 118 articles from the Scopus database were included for review.

Findings

From this research, the authors found four main determinants for career indecision, namely (1) career-related decision-making difficulties, (2) adolescent differences, (3) individual and situational career decision-making profiles (CDMPs) and (4) level of individual readiness for career choice, which have been researched in the last two decades. Additionally, eight factors/areas were found to be addressed in future research on career indecision which include those four common determinants, the other three determinants, namely (1) individual differences, (2) contextual/environmental factors, (3) social factors, and one outcome, subjective well-being.

Research limitations/implications

The study had limitations in conducting this research, and the findings of the study provide some theoretical and future research implications.

Practical implications

The seven determinants and the only outcome provide some implications for practitioners and policymakers.

Originality/value

The study found seven determinants and one outcome of career indecision derived from empirical studies conducted during 2000–2021.

Details

Journal of Humanities and Applied Social Sciences, vol. 5 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2632-279X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1968

IF ONE assumes that people get the capital they deserve the Irish must be a very worthy race. Few governments find themselves housed in a city of such varied character as Dublin…

Abstract

IF ONE assumes that people get the capital they deserve the Irish must be a very worthy race. Few governments find themselves housed in a city of such varied character as Dublin. Sheltered below the Wicklow Hills, bisected by the Liffey, boasting a profusion of unspoiled Georgian architecture, with an enviable literary and dramatic tradition and the largest brewery in the world, it is peopled by folk whose ease of manner and cadency of voice give them an irresistible charm.

Details

Work Study, vol. 17 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0043-8022

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