Effects of the luminous environment on managerial decision making
"Little is known about the influence the physical environment may have on the way a manager goes about making decisions. This work considers one element of the environment, lighting, and attempts to establish a relationship between that element and the decision strategy a manager may select. From a review of the literature on the effects of light on man and from the field of decision making, a model is posited suggesting that the luminous environment affects decision making. Since others have established that mood influences how decisions are made, and since it is suggested in the literature that lighting affects mood, the lighting/mood link was selected as the focus of the investigation. This was done in two phases. The first phase sought to clarify some of the relationships between the luminous environment and positive affective state. The second phase was intended to determine if the mood changes elicited by lighting were sufficient to cause detectable differences in decision strategy. The first phase produced the seminal result that women respond differently from men as regards the effect of lighting on good mood. Women's shifts in the "positive affect" score on the Multiple Affect Adjective Check List were strongly negative in a "bright" condition. Men tended to shift toward enhanced good mood under the "bright" condition whereas a "dim" environment had a detrimental effect on good mood. In the second phase of the work, these results were replicated, and moderate support for the decision making hypotheses was demonstrated"--Abstract, page ii.
Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering
Missouri University of Science and Technology
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