Chapter $4$ Case $$ Management at Work $-$ The Not$-$So$-$Smart Phone Company p$.111-113$

Fundamentals of Management by Ricky Griffin $10$th Edition

$1.$Once the iPhone and Androids penetrated the market, RIM faced a serious challenge: It had two distinct groups of customers to which it had to market its products. What were those two groups, and why were their needs and wants incompatible? Explain how this situation put RIM in a state of uncertainty. What risks did it face in making decisions to respond to this situation?

$2.$When RIM decided to incorporate personal apps into the BlackBerry, developers were required to use the company$$s Java$-$based operating system, which had been created in the $1990$s$.$ In addition, they were required to submit apps for prior approval. Several apps$$including Instagram and Tumblr$$went elsewhere. Explain this problem as one of bounded rationality. Judging from what you know about RIM from the case, in what other ways would you say that RIM decision makers were hampered by bounded rationality?

$3.$Hersh Schefrin, a pioneer in the behavioral aspects of financial decision making, studies how a specific set of psychological traps snare decision makers, causing them to make inferior decisions. Two of the most common are excessive optimism and overconfidence. People learn to be excessively optimistic and overconfident. This means that successful people overestimate their past successes, which feeds these biases. Judging from the details of the case, explain how these two forms of $$bias$$ affected decision making at RIM. How might RIM$$s $$inferior decisions$$ have been avoided if executives like Lazaridis and Balsillie had applied the steps in rational decision making?

$4.$The barrier between work and home is becoming increasingly blurred. Several years ago, the standard was that businesses would provide phones for employees to use for business purposes and individuals would have their own phones for personal use. Now, though, most people have a single phone. Can employers take advantage of the fact that you$$re $$plugged in all day long$?$ Is it a problem if people use their phone for personal business when they$$re at work?

Must include summary.