Submitted by Arthur Schuler da Igreja (arthur.igreja@gmail.com) on 2014-10-22T12:15:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE - ARTHUR SCHULER DA IGREJA - ENTREGA FINAL.pdf: 3059244 bytes, checksum: 02c543b95b187f0c4f61cb8368dfcc7a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Janete de Oliveira Feitosa (janete.feitosa@fgv.br) on 2014-11-10T15:08:42Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE - ARTHUR SCHULER DA IGREJA - ENTREGA FINAL.pdf: 3059244 bytes, checksum: 02c543b95b187f0c4f61cb8368dfcc7a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2014-11-17T11:28:58Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE - ARTHUR SCHULER DA IGREJA - ENTREGA FINAL.pdf: 3059244 bytes, checksum: 02c543b95b187f0c4f61cb8368dfcc7a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-11-17T11:29:40Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TESE - ARTHUR SCHULER DA IGREJA - ENTREGA FINAL.pdf: 3059244 bytes, checksum: 02c543b95b187f0c4f61cb8368dfcc7a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-09-30 / The problem of decision making, its mechanisms and consequences is the very core of management, it is virtually impossible to separate the act of manage from this knowledge area. As defined by Herbert Simon – 'decision making' as though it were synonymous with 'managing'. A decision is a selection made by an individual regarding a choice of a conclusion about a situation. This represents a course of behavior pertaining to what must be done or what must not be done. A decision is the point at which plans, policies and objectives are translated into concrete actions. Our behavior during decisive moments is closely linked with our brain dominance profile. Over the years, our decision-making processes develop a consistent pattern, which can be described as a decision-making style. Our style is grounded in our preferences, which arise from our brain dominance characteristics […]. The importance of understanding the impact of our thinking preferences and how to improve the effectiveness as a leader of organizations are the main justifications for this thesis; the main problem addressed is the behavioral profile diversity in a selective Master’s cohort formed by students from several different countries. The research methodology approach has been quantitative, through questionnaire administration using the HBDI (Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument), a validated framework developed by William 'Ned' Herrmann when he was the leader of General Electric's Crotonville facility. This questionnaire has been administered in hundreds of thousands professional, enabling the possibility to establish correlations between a certain group and several historical databases. The selected group of analysis is the first cohort (23 students) from the CIM (Corporate International Master's), a joint program between Georgetown University (USA), ESADE (Spain) and FGV (Brazil). Besides decision preferences, the obtained profile enables the discussion on leadership style, heuristic's pitfalls and a base to compare with future cohorts. The fundamental research question is: how diverse is the dominant decision-making profile for the CIM students?

Differential item functioning (DIF) is present when examinees who have the same level of a trait have a different probability of correctly answering a test item intended to measure that trait (Shepard & Averill, 1981). The following study is a DIF analysis of the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), a preference profiling instrument developed by Herrmann International to help individuals identify their dominant preferences and then classify their level of dominance into four preference quadrants. Examinees who completed the American English version of the instrument were classified as the reference group and examinees of the International English version were classified as the focal group. Out of 105 items, 11 were manifesting a large amount of DIF and were flagged for further review. The POLYSIBTEST procedure was used to carry out the DIF analysis. POLYSIBTEST is an extension of the SIBTEST procedure, which is a conceptually simple method for analyzing DIF that uses a latent trait measure rather than an observed total score. The latent trait measure helps detect both uniform and nonuniform DIF and the POLYSIBTEST procedure is used for both dichotomous and polytomous items. Each of the four preference quadrants were analyzed separately to reduce incorrect findings as a result of ipsative scoring. The process used to complete the DIF analysis was documented so that additional language groups may be analyzed by Herrmann International.