Birnie, J (1996) Bias and financial management judgements. Journal of Financial Management of Property and Construction, 1(1), pp. 37-54. ISSN 1366-4387
Abstract
The paper considers the psychology of human predictive judgements and how this may influence decision making in the financial management of property and construction. Relevant work in behaviourial decision making related to human bias is reviewed and the extent to which professional training may improve the quality of the judgement is examined. The findings of some empirical work which confirmed the evidence of bias is reported. The overall conclusion is that many intuitive judgements are likely to contain bias. Training, however, helps to reduce the extent of the bias, and more importantly, an understanding of human behaviour in intuitive judgement making, leads to a greater awareness of the likely existence of bias.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | bias, cost prediction, decision theory/analysis, estimating, human judgement |
| Index terms: | cost prediction, financial management, human behaviour, estimating, psychology, decision theory, evidence, bias, decision-making |
| Subjects: | economic analysis, evaluation and assessment methods, health behaviours and lifestyles, behavioral psychology, financial and cost management, decision analysis, probability and distributions |
| Topics: | Risk Management, Research Practice, Cost Management, Business Strategy |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here