Temporal Stability and Response-Order Biases in Participant Descriptions of Organizational Decisions

Abstract

In this article the author discusses research he conducted that examined the accuracy of retrospective reports given by participants in organizational decisions for temporal stability and response-order biases.The author notes that retrospective reports are often used in research studies related to innovation, business policy formulation, organizational change, and other decision-related processes. He hypothesized that the content of the reports concerning organizational decisions would be stable across times, that the stability of the reports concerning organizational decisions would not vary across moderate time lapses and that the reliability with which data were included in the reports would be positively correlated with the informant's perception of the importance of the data.