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Policy-capturing is an experimental technique potentially capable of providing powerful insights into the cognitive bases of work-related decision processes by revealing actors’ “implicit” models of the problem at hand, thereby opening up the “black box” of managerial and organizational cognition. This chapter considers the strengths and weaknesses of policy-capturing vis-à-vis alternative approaches that seek to capture, in varying ways, the inner workings of people’s minds as they make decisions. It then outlines the critical issues that need to be addressed when designing policy-capturing studies and offers practical advice to would-be users concerning some of the common pitfalls of the technique and ways of avoiding them.

This chapter outlines purpose, procedure, benefits and limitations of the policy capturing methodology. It further presents an example of use of the methodology.

During labor shortages, organizations that wish to recruit effectively must advertise jobs attractive to applicants. Demonstrates that policy capturing methodology can be used to uncover the job attributes of interest to potential applicants. Examines the influence of five organizational attributes on the willingness to apply for and accept a job offer in law enforcement. A total of 213 individuals seeking basic law enforcement training certification participated in this study. Each participant completed a survey made up of 32 scenarios varying on levels of five attributes. For the dependent variables “willingness to apply for a job” and “willingness to accept a job offer”, starting salary exerted the most influence on individuals’ job choice decisions. Relocation requirements, advancement opportunities, image, and retirement plan followed respectively in amount of influence exerted for each variable.

Although flexible work arrangements (FWAs) are widely regarded as a desirable employee benefit, questions remain about which factors drive (or attenuate) applicant attraction to them. The authors offer a novel theoretical account by advancing the concept of lay theories (i.e. mindsets) around an individual's ability to juggle work and life responsibilities, defined as beliefs that the ability to juggle is either malleable (i.e. growth) or cannot be changed (i.e. fixed), which suggests greater efficacy increases attraction.

Utilizing an experimental policy-capturing design, 86 participants each rated a series of 64 job offers (N = 5,376) with several manipulated job attributes. Participants were randomly assigned into a growth or fixed mindset condition.

Multilevel regressions revealed that a growth (vs fixed) mindset caused participants to place greater weight on flexible work scheduling policies by reporting greater attraction to jobs with flexible arrangements.

Organizations may increase applicant attraction by taking steps to ensure that the value of work–life benefits is salient, such as offering concrete examples of how policies have been used.

This study questions the assumption that those who need flexibility are more attracted to FWAs and demonstrates that beliefs around one's ability to juggle work–life demands are a unique mechanism shaping applicant attraction.

Women are dramatically under‐represented in upper level managerial positions. Although they comprise about one‐third of all managers and professionals in the work‐force (Hellwig, & Tedeschi, 1986), women seem to confront a “glass ceiling” when they seek high level managerial positions. According to a recent survey of the 1,000 largest companies in the United States, less than 4% of their upper level managers are female (“Ten years later”, 1990). A more subtle problem, but one of equal concern, is the way in which women who do achieve managerial positions may be treated. There is good evidence to suggest that, relative to their male counterparts, many female managers encounter serious problems in areas such as pay, prestige of their positions, and evaluations of their abilities and performance (see, for example, Mount, & Ellis, 1989; Wittig, & Lowe, 1989).

Although the appraisal of a situation as challenging has positive effects on performance and stress-related outcomes, the situational and individual characteristics that make challenge appraisal likely are far from clear. The purpose of this paper is to test these characteristics based on a review of the conceptualizations of challenge and the associated positive effects.

Potential characteristics of challenge are tested in two policy-capturing studies using a full factorial experimental design.

Results reveal that situations are appraised as more challenging than threatening when goal importance, task difficulty and controllability are high rather than low.

These results indicate that challenge and threat are distinguished through the means a person believes to have available to cope with demands, an aspect of controllability.

This paper provides a first experimental test of characteristics of challenging situations.

Mobile instant messaging (IM) has been increasingly adopted by hotels to communicate with customers. This study aims to explore communication between hotels and customers and identifies the factors that affect hotel customers’ intention to use mobile IM to communicate with hotels.

A two-stage exploratory sequential mixed-method design, which combines semi-structured interview and policy-capturing method was applied.

The findings indicate that customers are more likely to use mobile IM to communicate with hotels for non-urgent matters; before and after a stay; and if customers are accustomed to using mobile IM for work and non-work purposes in daily life.

This study goes beyond traditional theories to capturing communication-related factors that affect customers’ IM use in a hotel context.

The findings indicate why hotel managers should avoid relying on IM as the dominant communication channel.

This is among one of the first studies that explore customers’ communication needs and communication media choice in hotels.

The purpose of this paper is to identify managerial and organizational characteristics and behaviors that facilitate the fostering of a just and trusting culture within the healthcare system.

Two studies were conducted. The initial qualitative one was used to identify themes based on interviews with health care workers that facilitate a just and trusting culture. The quantitative one used a policy-capturing design to determine which factors were most likely to predict outcomes of manager and organizational trust.

The factors of violation type (ability vs integrity), providing an explanation or not, blame vs no blame by manager, and blame vs no blame by organization were all significant predictors of perceptions of trust.

Limitations to the generalizability of findings included both a small and non-representative sample from one health care region.

The present findings can be useful in developing training systems for managers and organizational executive teams for managing medical error events in a manner that will help develop a just and trusting culture.

A just and trusting culture should enhance the likelihood of reporting medical errors. Improved reporting, in turn, should enhance patient safety.

This is the first field study experimentally manipulating aspects of organizational trust within the health care sector. The use of policy-capturing is a unique feature that sheds light into the decision-making of health care workers as to the efficaciousness of particular managerial and organizational characteristics that impact a just and trusting culture.

Prior research on post-acquisition integration has paid little attention to the factors that influence the development of trust between the members of an acquiring firm and those of the target firm. Using a policy capturing approach, we found that five aspects of the takeover situation and the integration process affect target firm members’ trust in the acquiring firm's management: takeover friendliness, national cultural similarity, interaction history of the acquiring firm and the target firm, retained autonomy, and attractiveness of the acquiring firm's HR policies. Our findings suggest that of the five trust antecedents, the attractiveness of the acquirer's HR policies is by far the most powerful predictor of target firm members’ trust in the acquiring firm's management. The implications for post-acquisition integration research and practice are discussed.

Based on an earlier policy‐capturing study of the Big Five personality traits and general mental ability, this paper explores and analyzes the hiring preference of Hong Kong employers across five important personal attributes, including not only personality but also practical skill dimensions. The preferences and trade‐offs of 300 experienced recruiters were obtained via conjoint analysis, a theoretically grounded statistical tool that is used to discompose and analyze decisions, for assessing the hiring decisions for entry‐level professional positions. Among knowledge, skills, abilities, and personality, the personality of a candidate has a relatively greater impact on the hiring decision. Three of the Big Five personality traits were elected from among five major hiring attributes for effective performance, with conscientiousness being the most dominant attribute across all eight major industries. The other attributes, in order of importance, include English communication skills, openness to new experiences, academic performance, and agreeableness. Discrepancies between intended and actual decisions were also addressed by comparing the results with self‐reported ratings.