| Uncertainty Revisited: Nonlinear, Chaotic Changes On The Journey Toward Decision Resolution |
| | Cheney, Mavis A. | U. of Texas, Arlington | mcs3430@utarlg.uta.edu | 817/272-3166 |
| | Harrison, A. David | U. of Texas, Arlington | harrison@uta.edu | (817)-272-3854 |
| | We recast conventional uncertainty concepts using ideas from chaos and nonlinear dynamic systems theory. Three main, interdisciplinary “streams” of organizational uncertainty concepts have evolved in the literature: (1) lack of causal knowledge about a firm's environment(s), (2) noise in the channels of firm-environment information exchanges, and (3) variation in firm member perceptions and therefore lack of within-firm consensus. The linear, continuous assumptions implicit in those streams of concepts are contrasted with chaos principles. + |
| | Keywords: uncertainty; decision-making; chaos |
| Executive perceptions of environmental uncertainty sources: A taxonomy |
| | Priem, Richard L. | U. of Texas, Arlington | Priem@uta.edu | (817) 272-3865 |
| | Love, Leonard G. | U. of Texas, Arlington | llove@uta.edu | 817-272-3166 |
| | Shaffer, Margaret A. | Hong Kong Polytechnic U. | msmshaff@polyu.edu.hk | (852) 2774-3679 |
| | Top executives in Hong Kong were asked to make similarity judgments for sources of uncertainty they had previously identified as facing their firms. MDS determined the charcateristics used by the executives in distinguishing among uncertainty sources. Cluster analysis then produced a taxonomy categorizing sources of environmental uncertainty based on executive perceptions. |
| | Keywords: PEU; Taxonomy; Executives |
| Divergence Between Informant and Archival Measures of the Environment: Real Differences, Artifact, or Perceptual Error? |
| | Bhattacharya, Mousumi | Syracuse U. | mbhattac@som.syr.edu | (315)-443-1040 |
| | Wheatley, Kathleen K. | Syracuse U. | wheatley@som.syr.edu | (315)-443-1040 |
| | Doty, D. Harold | Syracuse U. | hdoty@som.syr.edu | (315)-443-1040 |
| | Organizational environments are a central concern for researchers in organization theory and strategy. Despite the importance of environmental variables, important issues concerning the definitions and measurement of environmental variables remain unresolved. Particularly troubling are reports that informant assessments of the environment do not converge with archival measures of the environment. This divergence has lead some authors to suggest that informant measures do not provide accurate assessments of the environment because informant reports are biased by perceptual error. This study investigates whether the observed divergence can be attributed to perceptual error on the part of the informant that are caused by individual and organizational level mediating filters, to real differences between a firm's environment and an aggregate industry environment, or simply to methodological artifacts that is caused by differences in the constructive and operational definitions of archival and informant measures. The tests of five separate hypotheses provide some support for each of the alternative causal explanations. Some of the observed divergence between archival and informant measures can be attributed to confusion about the appropriate level of analysis and to the differences between the environmental variation and environmental uncertainty constructs. However, some of this observed divergence appears to be perceptual error that may be related to individual characteristics of the informant. |
| | Keywords: Environmental Uncertainty; Environmental Variation; Perceptual Error |