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MANAGERIAL DECISION MAKING ABOUT EMPLOYEE DISCIPLINE: A POLICY‐CAPTURING APPROACH
Author(s) -
KLAAS BRIAN S.,
WHEELER HOYT N.
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
personnel psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.076
H-Index - 142
eISSN - 1744-6570
pISSN - 0031-5826
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-6570.1990.tb02009.x
Subject(s) - discipline , attribution , context (archaeology) , psychology , line management , affect (linguistics) , public relations , provocation test , social psychology , political science , law , alternative medicine , medicine , paleontology , communication , pathology , biology
This study examined how personnel managers ( n = 19) and line managers ( n = 28) make disciplinary decisions. Using a policy‐capturing approach, subjects were asked to respond to disciplinary incidents that varied in terms of three factors likely to affect managerial attributions about the cause of the disciplinary problem (managerial provocation, personal problems, or tenure). The incidents also varied in terms of factors made relevant by the economic, institutional/legal, and hierarchical contexts. Of the six variables manipulated, the factor relating to the institutional/legal context had the largest impact on the decisions made by the personnel managers, and the factor relating to the hierarchical context had the largest impact on the decisions made by the line managers. While provocation was relatively important for both line and personnel managers, personal problems, tenure, and the economic implications of the decision had more modest impacts on managerial decisions. The results also suggest that there is substantial variation across managers in terms of the decision rules employed when responding to disciplinary cases.