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Selective exposure to information

Selective exposure to information Ar e yo u certain tha t you r judgement s are unbiase d an d you r decision- makin g as unclouded as it should be? If not it may be due to a comparativel y unknown phenomenon called cognitive dissonance whic h ma y have lessened your ability to manage. b y Ro y McLennan , Lecturer, Department of Applied Economics and Business Studies, Sheffield University. Leo Festinger, in an essay, pointed out that the erected, prompted him to ask to go back again. 'individual tends to seek evidence which will confirm On his return he found that a labour relations the validity of his existing attitudes'. This tendency problem had developed. It took two more visits to often leads the individual to exclude or minimize get the 'facts' as he saw them and which he claimed the truth, in favour of self-respect and belief, a were only available from the shop stewards. mental state hardly desirable for a manager. In the The company had run, or rather existed, on cost- following study the attitudes of the subject are fairly plus defence contracts until it was taken over by one typical of most graduates today. Perhaps they of the major steel companies in the steel industry, are guilty of cognitive dissonance in that they have Senior & Co. This re-organization involved the ignored the management viewpoint, or perhaps there dismissal of the senior executive and the installation is not enough information available. Perhaps there of a few of Senior's foremen. is some justification for their views. Despite these changes, Senior's costing experts found that the economics of the company were such P. R. Mansfield was a management trainee at that it was still cheaper to sub-contract their require- Northcote & Company, a large English steel firm. He had been brought up in Liverpool and after ments to other companies outside the group. completing grammar school had gone up to Ledfield Management therefore decided to boost efficiency by what Mansfield felt were the crudest and most dis- University to study mechanical engineering. As honest methods, 'planned redundancy'. subsidiaries to his main subject Robert Mansfield was also required to study applied economics, Basically, the company decided to sack 80 em- industrial psychology and industrial relations, which ployees, including two apprentices, four shop he found stimulating. He adopted strong attitudes to stewards and one 64-year-old who, if he was sacked, trade unionism: "One of the people who influenced would lose his retirement pension and only receive me was my tutor in industrial relations, John his own contributions. No reference was made to Torrington who, though he didn't hold any strong shop stewards or any other Trade Union officials. political views, was very reactionary about what he The 80 redundant workers left the firm. Three called political 'airy-fairy' facts. My initial attitudes to months later negotiations between management and trade unions were that they had some right to stewards were deadlocked. The shop stewards refused improve their conditions but that any effort which management offers of a revised wage structure and had been made by Parliament was quashed by the the waiving of restrictive practices. To resolve this courts. It made me think that the Tory party were argument in their own way management issued more either disappointing but there was excuse for their notices sacking the whole company, in this way being so as they were comparatively unskilled in the terminating their existing contracts. At the time subject. When I first went to Ledfield you could say unemployment was at 6 per cent of the total popula- I was a weak Tory but by the time that I had left I tion in the town, higher than the national average. had become very left-wing, holding strong views on Most of the workers reapplied and were taken back management and labour relations!" under the new conditions. When he had graduated Bob joined Northcote & Bob Mansfield's reaction was, "This was a deliber- Company for a two-year training programme which ate de-manning in order to tighten up the work standards by demanding that the same work be consisted of a few months at a company training done by fewer people. What was worse was that they centre followed by visits to various company plants at different locations. This part of the course he disregarded every joint agreement. Surely it is one of thoroughly enjoyed and spent as much time as he their duties to carry out re-employment and deploy- ment of the work force so that as little damage as could on the shop floor. possible is done to industrial relations." One of these trips took him to Alexander Newson & Company Ltd., a structural steel works with about Further reading 260 employees. He described it as a happy factory L. Festinger. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. Scientific American, but only because the management "let the men get October, 1962. away with murder". Naturally he made friends and T. A. Seiler. SYSTEMS ANALYSIS IN ORGANIZATIONAL BE­ this, as well as the fact that a coke pusher was being HAVIOUR, Irwin, 1967. Pp. 54-6. SUMMER 1970 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Management Decision Emerald Publishing

Selective exposure to information

McLennan, Roy
Management Decision , Volume 4 (2): 1 – Feb 1, 1970
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Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © Emerald Group Publishing Limited
ISSN
0025-1747
DOI
10.1108/eb000930
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Abstract

Ar e yo u certain tha t you r judgement s are unbiase d an d you r decision- makin g as unclouded as it should be? If not it may be due to a comparativel y unknown phenomenon called cognitive dissonance whic h ma y have lessened your ability to manage. b y Ro y McLennan , Lecturer, Department of Applied Economics and Business Studies, Sheffield University. Leo Festinger, in an essay, pointed out that the erected, prompted him to ask to go back again. 'individual tends to seek evidence which will confirm On his return he found that a labour relations the validity of his existing attitudes'. This tendency problem had developed. It took two more visits to often leads the individual to exclude or minimize get the 'facts' as he saw them and which he claimed the truth, in favour of self-respect and belief, a were only available from the shop stewards. mental state hardly desirable for a manager. In the The company had run, or rather existed, on cost- following study the attitudes of the subject are fairly plus defence contracts until it was taken over by one typical of most graduates today. Perhaps they of the major steel companies in the steel industry, are guilty of cognitive dissonance in that they have Senior & Co. This re-organization involved the ignored the management viewpoint, or perhaps there dismissal of the senior executive and the installation is not enough information available. Perhaps there of a few of Senior's foremen. is some justification for their views. Despite these changes, Senior's costing experts found that the economics of the company were such P. R. Mansfield was a management trainee at that it was still cheaper to sub-contract their require- Northcote & Company, a large English steel firm. He had been brought up in Liverpool and after ments to other companies outside the group. completing grammar school had gone up to Ledfield Management therefore decided to boost efficiency by what Mansfield felt were the crudest and most dis- University to study mechanical engineering. As honest methods, 'planned redundancy'. subsidiaries to his main subject Robert Mansfield was also required to study applied economics, Basically, the company decided to sack 80 em- industrial psychology and industrial relations, which ployees, including two apprentices, four shop he found stimulating. He adopted strong attitudes to stewards and one 64-year-old who, if he was sacked, trade unionism: "One of the people who influenced would lose his retirement pension and only receive me was my tutor in industrial relations, John his own contributions. No reference was made to Torrington who, though he didn't hold any strong shop stewards or any other Trade Union officials. political views, was very reactionary about what he The 80 redundant workers left the firm. Three called political 'airy-fairy' facts. My initial attitudes to months later negotiations between management and trade unions were that they had some right to stewards were deadlocked. The shop stewards refused improve their conditions but that any effort which management offers of a revised wage structure and had been made by Parliament was quashed by the the waiving of restrictive practices. To resolve this courts. It made me think that the Tory party were argument in their own way management issued more either disappointing but there was excuse for their notices sacking the whole company, in this way being so as they were comparatively unskilled in the terminating their existing contracts. At the time subject. When I first went to Ledfield you could say unemployment was at 6 per cent of the total popula- I was a weak Tory but by the time that I had left I tion in the town, higher than the national average. had become very left-wing, holding strong views on Most of the workers reapplied and were taken back management and labour relations!" under the new conditions. When he had graduated Bob joined Northcote & Bob Mansfield's reaction was, "This was a deliber- Company for a two-year training programme which ate de-manning in order to tighten up the work standards by demanding that the same work be consisted of a few months at a company training done by fewer people. What was worse was that they centre followed by visits to various company plants at different locations. This part of the course he disregarded every joint agreement. Surely it is one of thoroughly enjoyed and spent as much time as he their duties to carry out re-employment and deploy- ment of the work force so that as little damage as could on the shop floor. possible is done to industrial relations." One of these trips took him to Alexander Newson & Company Ltd., a structural steel works with about Further reading 260 employees. He described it as a happy factory L. Festinger. COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. Scientific American, but only because the management "let the men get October, 1962. away with murder". Naturally he made friends and T. A. Seiler. SYSTEMS ANALYSIS IN ORGANIZATIONAL BE­ this, as well as the fact that a coke pusher was being HAVIOUR, Irwin, 1967. Pp. 54-6. SUMMER 1970

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Management Decision – Emerald Publishing

Published: Feb 1, 1970

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