Zur Shapira

Bio: Zur Shapira is an academic researcher from New York University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Organizational learning & Venture capital. The author has an hindex of 32, co-authored 89 publications receiving 7492 citations. Previous affiliations of Zur Shapira include York University & University of California, Berkeley.

Managerial perspectives on risk and risk taking

Abstract: This paper explores the relation between decision theoretic conceptions of risk and the conceptions held by executives. It considers recent studies of risk attitudes and behavior among managers against the background of conceptions of risk derived from theories of choice. We conclude that managers take risks and exhibit risk preferences, but the processes that generate those observables are somewhat removed from the classical processes of choosing from among alternative actions in terms of the mean (expected value) and variance (risk) of the probability distributions over possible outcomes. We identify three major ways in which the conceptions of risk and risk taking held by these managers lead to orientations to risk that are different from what might be expected from a decision theory perspective: Managers are quite insensitive to estimates of the probabilities of possible outcomes; their decisions are particularly affected by the way their attention is focused on critical performance targets; and they ...

Variable risk preferences and the focus of attention

Abstract: Empirical investigations of decision making indicate that the level of individual or organizational risk taking is responsive to a risk taker's changing fortune. Several nonstationary random-walk models of risk taking are developed to describe this phenomenon. The models portray a risk taker's history as the cumulated realizations of a series of independent draws from a normal probability distribution of possible outcomes. This performance distribution is assumed to have an unchanging mean and a variance (risk) that changes

Patterns of behavior of professionally managed and independent investors

Abstract: In this paper, we analyze the investment patterns of a large number of clients of a major Israeli brokerage house during 1994. We compare the behavior of clients making independent investment decisions to that of investors whose accounts were managed by brokerage professionals. Our main objective is to investigate whether the disposition effect (i.e., the tendency to sell winners quicker than losers), demonstrated in the US only for individual investors, also holds for professional investors. This analysis is important, as accepted financial theory predicts that prices are determined mainly by decisions made by professionals. We show that both professional and independent investors exhibit the disposition effect, although the effect is stronger for independent investors. The second objective of our study is the comparison of trade frequency, volume and profitability between independent and professionally managed accounts. We believe that these comparisons not only provide insights of their own, but also help to put the differences in the disposition effect in a wider perspective. We demonstrate that professionally managed accounts were more diversified and that round trips were both less correlated with the market and slightly more profitable than those of independent accounts.

Organizational decision making

Abstract: Part I. Introduction: 1. Introduction Zur Shapira 2. Understanding how decisions happen in organizations James March Part II. Information Processing and Attention Allocation: 3. Trying to help S & L's: how organizations with good intentions jointly enacted disaster William H. Starbuck and P. Nayaran Pant 4. Organizational choice under ambiguity: decision making in the chemical industry following Bhopal Howard Kunreuther and Jacqueline Meszaros 5. Strategic agenda building in organizations Jane Dutton Part III. Preference Processing: 6. The social ideologies of power in organizational decisions Gerald Robert Salancik and Margaret Cooper Brindle 7. Managerial incentives in organizations: economic, political and symbolic perspectives Edward J. Zajac and James D. Westphal 8. Coordination in organizations: a game-theoretic perspective Colin Camerer and Marc Knez Part IV. Decision Processes: 9. The escalation of commitment: an update and appraisal Barry M. Staw 10. The possibility of distributed decision making Baruch Fischhoff and Stephen Johnson 11. Aligning the residuals: risk, return, responsibility and authority Raghu Garud and Zur Shapira 12. Organizational decision making as rule following Xueguang Zhou Part V. Alternative Approaches: 13. Naturalistic decision making and the new organizational context Terry Connolly and Ken Koput 14. Telling decisions: the role of narrative in organizational decision making Ellen O'Connor 15. Bounded rationality, indeterminacy, and the managerial theory of the firm Roy Radner 16. The scarecrow's search: a cognitive psychologist's perspective on organizational decision making John W. Payne.

An Integrative Model Of Organizational Trust

Abstract: Scholars in various disciplines have considered the causes, nature, and effects of trust. Prior approaches to studying trust are considered, including characteristics of the trustor, the trustee, and the role of risk. A definition of trust and a model of its antecedents and outcomes are presented, which integrate research from multiple disciplines and differentiate trust from similar constructs. Several research propositions based on the model are presented.

Agency Theory: An Assessment and Review

Abstract: Agency theory is an important, yet controversial, theory. This paper reviews agency theory, its contributions to organization theory, and the extant empirical work and develops testable propositions. The conclusions are that agency theory (a) offers unique insight into information systems, outcome uncertainty, incentives, and risk and (b) is an empirically valid perspective, particularly when coupled with complementary perspectives. The principal recommendation is to incorporate an agency perspective in studies of the many problems having a cooperative structure.

The myopia of learning

Abstract: Organizational learning has many virtues, virtues which recent writings in strategic management have highlighted. Learning processes, however, are subject to some important limitations. As is well-known, learning has to cope with confusing experience and the complicated problem of balancing the competing goals of developing new knowledge (i.e., exploring) and exploiting current competencies in the face of dynamic tendencies to emphasize one or the other. We examine the ways organizations approach these problems through simplification and specialization and how those approaches contribute to three forms of learning myopia, the tendency to overlook distant times, distant places, and failures, and we identify some ways in which organizations sustain exploration in the face of a tendency to overinvest in exploitation. We conclude that the imperfections of learning are not so great as to require abandoning attempts to improve the learning capabilities of organizations, but that those imperfections suggest a certain conservatism in expectations.

Myopia of learning

Abstract: Organizational learning has many virtues, virtues which recent writings in strategic management have highlighted. Learning processes, however, are subject to some important limitations. As is well-known, learning has to cope with confusing experience and the complicated problem of balancing the competing goals of developing new knowledge (i.e., exploring) and exploiting current competencies in the face of dynamic tendencies to emphasize one or the other. We examine the ways organizations approach these problems through simplification and specialization and how those approaches contribute to three forms of learning myopia, the tendency to overlook distant times, distant places, and failures, and we identify some ways in which organizations sustain exploration in the face of a tendency to overinvest in exploitation. We conclude that the imperfections of learning are not so great as to require abandoning attempts to improve the learning capabilities of organizations, but that those imperfections suggest a certain conservatism in expectations.