Are we to be made by the labels people stick to us?

Smashing and worrying experiments about how we can be made by the labels people give us.

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In Israel, 105 soldiers were put into a 15 week intensive commander training programme. Each soldier had a (fake and randomly assigned) previous assessment about his command potential and trainers were given this (fake) information before the session. The trainees did not know that their fake assessments were given to the trainers, and the trainers did not know that the assessments were bogus and randomly given. After 15 weeks, the standard examination to gauge the effectiveness of the programme was administered to all the trainees, and those soldiers (fakely) assessed as "high" command potential scored an average of 79.98, while those assessed as "average" and "unknown" scored averages of 72.45 and 65.18, respectively.

Eden, D. and A. Shani (1982), "Pygmalion Goes to Boot Camp: Expectancy, Leadership and Trainee Performance", J. of Applied Psychology 67, pp.194-99

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51 men and 51 women volunteers participated in a "communication" experiment. Each man was given the CV of a randomly assigned woman and her photo with whom he was to have a telephone conversation. Although the CV was genuine, the photo was not of hers, but the one the experimenters prepared; it was either one of a very pretty woman or one of an ordinary looking woman, randomly assigned. The men were asked to evaluate the women whom they were to talk, in terms of social desirableness, based on the CV and the fake photo. Neither men nor women knew that the men saw fake photos (It does not take a psychologist to guess that the men who saw a photo of a pretty woman would evaluate the women more positively and later engage in telephone conversation more enthusiastically). After the telephone conversations, the experimenters cut all the men's parts from the conversation recordings, leaving just the women's parts. Then further 12 people (who were unrelated with any of the men and women) were asked to listen to these recorded clips (of women's parts) and to evaluate those women based only on the recordings. The result was correlated with the original evaluations made by the men before the conversation.

Snyder, M., E. Decker and E. Bercheid (1977), "Social Perception and Interpersonal Behavior: On the Self-Fulfilling Nature of Social Stereotypes", J. of Personality and Social Psychology 55, pp.656-66.

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Both the episodes are found in Brafman, O. and R. Brafman (2008), Sway, Doubleday

IT投資の効果を実証する

平野雅章（2007）『IT投資で伸びる会社、沈む会社』日本経済出版社

情報投資（IT投資）の効果は、経済全体レベル（マクロレベル）では生産性の向上として測定されていますが、企業レベル（ミクロレベル）では必ずしも測定されていません。実証研究と称するものも、その多くは効果を（担当者／アンケート回答者の）主観で測定していて、本書の出版当時（2007年）、企業業績のような客観的な効果を測定している実証研究は殆どありませんでしたが、今もその状況は変わりません。

本書は、著者と共同研究者による日本企業のIT投資と企業業績についての客観的データによる実証研究を基に書かれています。学術論文・学会発表のレベルのデータ分析の結果を、ビジネス人の方々に分かり易く説明することを目指しました。

主なポイントは、
（１）IT投資と企業業績との間には緩い相関関係が見られるが、バラツキ（分散）が大きすぎて、IT投資以外の要因で企業業績を説明する必要がある。
（２）組織能力が高い場合には、IT投資と企業業績との相関が高く、IT投資のリターンを期待できる。
（３）組織能力が低い場合には、IT投資と企業業績との相関は見られず、回帰線を引くと右下がりになる（IT投資をすればするほど業績が落ちる）場合が多い。
（４）組織能力は「組織IQ」という尺度で測る。
（５）「組織IQ」の向上法
などです。

企業におけるERPなどのIT投資が必ずしも効果を上げていないと感じられている方々は、是非手にとって読んでみてください。IT投資のリターンが上がらない理由が分かり、リターンを向上させるための重要なヒントを得られます。