terça-feira, junho 14, 2011

Amor à primeira vista (parte III)

Continuado daqui.
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Ainda recentemente neste postal recordamos:
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"A pervasive finding in recent research using longitudinal establishment level data is that idiosyncratic factors dominate the distribution of output, employment, investment, and productivity growth rates across establishments."
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É algo em que acreditamos e que está de acordo com a nossa experiência de contacto e trabalho com as empresas.
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Neste artigo "Mental Models, Decision Rules, and Performance Heterogeneity" de Michael Shayne Gary e Robert E. Wood, publicado no número de Junho de 2011 da revista Strategic Management Journal, encontramos um conjunto de conclusões sintonizados com estas ideias que aqui defendemos há muito tempo.

"Our results provide empirical evidence for the links between mental models and performance outcomes and help explain why some managers and not others adopt strategies that are ultimately associated with competitive success. We found substantial variation in the accuracy of decision makers’ mental models and in performance. While it is certainly true that perfect mental models are not necessary to reach high performance outcomes our findings show that decision makers with more accurate mental models of the causal relationships in the business environment achieve higher performance outcomes.
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Our findings also help address an important challenge facing the strategy field about whether more accurate mental models enable managers ex ante to identify and interpret signals from their business environment that lead to superior strategic choices and performance outcomes. In our experimental study, variation in mental model accuracy is a key source of performance heterogeneity.
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Our findings also show that managers do not need accurate mental models of the entire business environment. Accurate mental models about the key principles of the business environment lead to superior decision rules and performance outcomes.
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The benefits of partial knowledge about the key principles far outweigh the benefits of other partial knowledge. Our findings are also consistent with prior research showing that experts with richer cognitive representations of the deep structure of problems outperform novices who typically focus on superficial features of problems. An important implication is that managers do not need to develop perfect and complete mental models of complex business environments, but should instead focus on identifying and understanding the key principles. (Moi ici: Claro que existe um outro lado... quando o mundo muda, se continuarmos a acreditar nos nossos modelos mentais... ficamos presos a fórmulas que deixaram de funcionar)
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Additionally, we find that decision rules stabilize rapidly, which explains why performance plateaus far below the potential achievable level. Rapid stabilization of decision rules is consistent with psychology research on complex problem solving that shows actors learning a new task or solving a novel complex problem quickly automate decision and action rules once they reach functional, satisficing levels of performance. (Moi ici: Daí a importância da liberdade económica para empreender e desalojar incumbentes cristalizados em práticas tornadas obsoletas, ou com um nível de desempenho longe do óptimo) Our results are also consistent with research that finds managers typically interpret information to reinforce their current mental model rather than challenge and update their beliefs.
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We did not find evidence that more accurate mental models were more important in the higher complexity decision environment.
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Perhaps in truly simple competitive environments—with smooth payoff landscapes—mental model accuracy may be less important for achieving high performance outcomes. There may also be a level of complexity that overwhelms managers’ capacity to either accurately infer causal relationships in the business environment or apply their mental models to make effective strategic choices."
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Onde é que já viram bonecos como este retirado do artigo?

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