Noticing Reading Mark Bazerman’s book “The Power of Noticing” can be an eye-opening experience. Throughout the book, Bazerman focuses on how noticing or not noticing can affect you and others around you. Bazerman presents the reader with insightful anecdotes and convincing arguments about the power of perception and the work of the leader. Some of the valuable points that Bazerman presents in the early chapters address such topics as “inattentional blindness” and “bounded awareness” (pp. 12‐13). For most readers these issues, which are critical to Bazerman’s foundation of noticing, may well be unfamiliar. Specifically, they speak to how people can be so intensely focused on a particular issue that they altogether miss critical events or …show more content…
Here the author provides a compelling and powerful argument for the ways in which leaders can intentionally bias their opinions and positions by willfully ignoring concrete data that would argue that they consider an alternate position to the one they have taken. Bazerman’s anecdotes here are taken from examining how Penn State and its venerated football program approached the sexual abuse perpetrated by Jerry Sandusky. The author argues that, at its core, the key leaders and decision makers were not willing to “see” or “consider” the blatant acts of abuse that were unfolding before their eyes because of a greater concern for the preservation of the university and the continued veneration of its football program and the reputation of the coach. Even though the data was visible for all to see, no one was willing to actually see it and report it. As Bazerman notes, “when we have a vested self‐interest in a situation, we have difficulty approaching the situation without bias, no matter how well‐calibrated we believe our moral compass to be” (p. …show more content…
This self‐serving bias takes disconfirming information and translates it to the point that it ends up supporting and confirming one’s position. “We discount facts,” argues Bazerman, “that contradict the conclusions we want to reach, and we uncritically accept evidence that supports our positions. Unaware of our skewed information processing, we erroneously conclude that our judgments are free of bias” (p. 53). Bazerman illustrates this bias at work in his research of the auditing process at the beginning of the twenty‐first century. Despite the facts of contradiction and conflict of interest, auditors believe they are fully independent even when the successes of the organizations they audit are tightly connected to their own success. Bazerman notes that, based on their research, when individuals have a measure of self‐interest in the outcome, “they are no longer capable of independence” (p.
the conclusion that bias plays a major role in the validity and credibility of documents and personal
Thamel, P. (2012). Shaken by Sandusky Scandal, a Changed Penn State Moves On. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 5 February 2017, from
Many pivotal managerial principles and practices are exemplified in the Case Study, Outrage at Eastern. In this particular story a manager, Charles Jackson, is faced with many difficult decisions regarding problems concerning one of his workers at Eastern Plating. One of Jackson’s workers named Marty Reid is accused of molestation of his stepdaughter. His allegations are made public in a recent writing in the “Evening Beacon”, the daily paper of the 10,000 town’s population. Reid also has his wife going against him as well, which automatically makes him guilty to the majority of the town. When Jackson reads the paper he immediately understands what he might be faced with in the next upcoming days of
“Awareness is the key here. Being aware of what is happening and being ahead of the frenzy that follows once the masses
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the Penn State Athletics Scandal, also referred to as the Sandusky Scandal. The Penn State Scandal first came to media attention in 2011. The events that took place at Penn State, show the impact that a centralized power structure and a lack of effective checks and balances system can have on people in an organization. Solutions need to be set up to protect future college athlete recruits. Finally, learning how Penn State University is moving past such a horrible scandal. This information
Niedermeyer, and Presha Niedermeyer. They performed surveys using internal auditors of public companies and external auditors from large and small firms. The survey questioned how auditors made ethical decisions, and they also wanted to see how internal auditors answered versus how external auditors answered. The result of the surveys showed that there was no difference in decision- making between internal and external auditors in the aspect of how major the effects unethical decisions on victims would be. The only difference between auditors in this study was how they make decisions on what is right and what is wrong. It appears that auditors that work for the Big Four have a stronger sense to determine what is right or wrong as opposed to the other auditors working in large and small firms. The study suggests that each firm adopts policies and special training to combat these
In 2011 head coach Joe Paterno of Pennsylvania State University was fired after a scandal involving Jerry Sandusky brought to light allegations of child sexual abuse that had been in the shadows for as many as 30 plus years without any discipline. After Sandusky was found guilty and sentenced to 30-60 years, some question whether this incident could have been prevented and why it was kept secret for so many years. The Sandusky scandal is a good example of a concept called Groupthink proposed by Irvan Janis (1982) “that describes a dysfunctional group process that can occur when group members focus on being cohesive, do not express disagreement or think critically, and as a result, make bad decisions”. In my paper I will highlight the concepts
The Penn State scandal affected many people. Many who worked for the University and many who weren’t affiliated with the college at all. All of the individuals affected by the incident are considered to be stakeholders. Although this incident impacted many individuals across the nation, the University resides in Pennsylvania, and the stakeholders include employees of the college, customers who attend various events at the college and the community it resides in (Crandall, Parnell, & Spillan, 2014). Even though all of these individuals are considered stakeholders, they can be placed in two different categories that consist of internal stakeholders and external stakeholders (Crandall et al., 2014). The internal stakeholders are individuals that
In the area of collegiate sports, there have been numerous heated debates about the integrity of many things concerning the NCAA and how it handles legal and ethical issues. Two well renowned scholars tackle this issue in their co-authored book entitled
If we were to slip up while on the job, that can reflect badly on the coaching staff and the athletes involved, so I take my job seriously. When I read the book, however, I was shocked at how Ridpath was treated for just doing his job. It seemed to me that the athletic department at Marshall had the same interests when it came to exploiting their athletes for money. According to Leopkey, people and groups within the organization can have different goals and as such will engage in conflict (2016b). They understand that sport is a multi-billion dollar industry, and they want to gain the most from it. Meanwhile, there was an ethical dilemma going on at Marshall because there were differences in morality based on the people involved. For example, Ridpath had to go think about his morals at Marshall. I feel like he used moral reasoning because he had to decide “whether a particular action is right or wrong, or whether we have a moral obligation to act in a particular manner towards others” (Leopkey, 2016a). In this case, the particular action was reporting the violations. It’s clear that Marshall did not have an established compliance system, especially since Ridpath stated that “I found out more stuff that was going on in my department out in the street than I did as an employee” (Ridpath, 2012). So
In The Cartel: Inside the Rise and Imminent fall of the NCAA, Taylor Branch is piecing together pieces of evidence and information about scandals that arose both the NCAA’s perspective as well as his own perspective to show contrast in the controversial findings within the NCAA concerning athletes and leadership. Throughout the entirety of the book, the picture that is being painted by Branch is that the NCAA as well as the institutions are reaping the benefits of intercollegiate athletics. While the "big men” are reaping the benefits of the skill and hard work of the college athletes. The information in Branch’s work not only presents the documents of scandals, but also presents his argument and proof for greed that is overtaking humanity, as well as athletics. The main focus is on the underlying theme of greed.
In terms of the anchoring bias, regularly revisit of the original decision based on the newly gathered data needs to be set up within the organization. Additionally, the decision maker should avoid the Confirmation Trap in which Bazerman and Moore (2009) argues that people tend to seek information that confirms their expectations and hypotheses. To recognize the bias, Mike Francis could
The “contradiction at the heart of big-time college football,” as Michael Oriard describes it, is the competing demands of marketing and education. The 1890s proved to university administrators that there was an enormous market for collegiate football, which postulated opportunities for university building. Since this ubiquitous realization, there has coincided this blatant, yet unchanging contradiction that academic institutions are permitted to profit off of the services provided by its student-athletes while the athletes must idly accept that they are amateurs, donating their efforts to their respective schools. The schools then direct this revenue toward strengthening their athletic departments, and thus continues this seemingly endless growth of big-time college sports, all while athletes remain uncompensated and academics continue to take a backseat.
Salaries, wages, and compensations have always been major and generally controversial topics in democratic America. And, with the rising popularity of college athletics, particularly football, compensation (or lack thereof) for college athletes has recently been a hot topic in American sports. While some of the debate stems from the similarity between responsibilities college athletes have to their programs and those of professionals, most of the issue involves the principles of amateurism. Recent “scandals” involving college athletes such as Terrelle Pryor, Johnny Manziel, and Todd Gurley have raised questions about the ethics of amateurism, particularly with regard to the NCAA organization. The issue is found in a very gray area, where there is most likely no definitive one-size-fits-all solution, but the resolution of this issue is one that will change and shape the future of college athletics across the national landscape.
The Model of Trust Enhancement was established to enhance and maintain the public’s trust in the accounting profession. Over the last two decades, the ethics of the accounting profession has been questioned and public trust destabilized, in particular for auditors, due to the Enron debacle. The fact that an auditing firm would assist their clients with publishing an inadequate set of financial statements shows their willingness to violate laws and regulations (Sims & Brinkmann, 2003). According to the textbook, “Because trust is essential, even the appearance of an accountant’s honesty and integrity is important. The auditor, therefore, must not only be trustworthy, but he or she must also appear trustworthy” (Duska, Duska & Ragatz, 2011, p. 116). The majority of statements filed inadequately have a substantial impact on the credibility of the accounting profession as a whole. Sullivan (n.d.10) states that a CPA must possess a high level of trust, by applying professional judgment and enhancing the three trustworthy characteristics (ability, benevolence, and integrity) when resolving accounting ethics dilemmas (slide 3).