The predominant, but largely untested, assumption in research on food choice is that people obey the classic commandments of rational behavior: they carefully look up every piece of relevant information, weight each piece according to subjective importance, and then combine them into a judgment or choice. In real world situations, however, the available time, motivation, and computational resources may simply not suffice to keep these commandments. Indeed, there is a large body of research suggesting that human choice is often better accommodated by heuristics-simple rules that enable decision making on the basis of a few, but important, pieces of information. We investigated the prevalence of such heuristics in a computerized experiment that engaged participants in a series of choices between two lunch dishes. Employing MouselabWeb, a process-tracing technique, we found that simple heuristics described an overwhelmingly large proportion of choices, whereas strategies traditionally deemed rational were barely apparent in our data. Replicating previous findings, we also observed that visual stimulus segments received a much larger proportion of attention than any nutritional values did. Our results suggest that, consistent with human behavior in other domains, people make their food choices on the basis of simple and informationally frugal heuristics.

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Purpose – Managers are confronted with increasing information overload and growing pressure for effective and efficient decision making. The visualisation of data represents a way to overcome this dilemma and to improve management decision quality. The purpose of this paper is to transfer insights from visualisation research to the managerial accounting context and clarify the impact of visualisation on management accounting reports and decision making. The authors deduce implications for behavioural management accounting research, teaching, and business practice from previous findings and the results. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted an experiment with students and experienced managers. Participants had to evaluate eight different business units based on four accounts (sales, EBIT, FPY, and delivery reliability). The information the authors provided to the participants was either presented as tables only, or in tables and graphs. Findings – The empirical results show that supplementary graphs improve decision quality, especially within the manager sample but do not affect decision confidence in a performance evaluation task. The authors furthermore find that managers perform poorly when only provided with tables, and they achieve the overall best score when provided with both tables and graphs, whereas students perform similarly in both conditions. The authors additionally show that proficiency affects not only decision quality but also decision confidence. Research limitations/implications – The results differ from predictions based solely on the cognitive fit model, as the authors found differences in decision quality to be stronger within the group of managers. The cognitive fit model proposes that decision making performance will improve when the problem representation and the decision making task match. Applying the model to a management context, it is obviously insufficient to explain the differences the authors obtained in the experiment. The authors observed that proficiency plays a role in such performance evaluation tasks. Practical implications – Based on the results, management accountants should analyse the task that needs to be solved with the reported data. By analysing the type of task, accountants can derive the information processing strategy that will most likely be used by executives for problem solving and determine the suitable visualisation format based on the cognitive fit model. Moderate or complex monitoring tasks will presumably be accessed with perceptual information processing. Data should thus be visualised with graphs. Originality/value – The authors provide empirical evidence that supplementary graphs in management reports improve decision quality but not decision confidence. The authors furthermore illustrate the limits of the explaining power of the cognitive fit model in a management report context. In an extension of cognitive fit theory, the authors argue that proficiency plays a crucial role in performance evaluation tasks. The authors propose a process for visualisation of management reports based on their findings and previous findings.

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Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by emeraldsrm:198285 [] For AuthorsIf you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Job markets in the transport and logistics industry are characterized by a scarcity of well-educated junior talent. Employer attractiveness is becoming more important in order to win the most talented junior staff. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how corporate social performance (CSP) profiles of logistics companies influence their attractiveness for job seekers. Design/methodology/approach -In a computerized laboratory experiment, the authors provided 95 students in their final year with job offer data that include general and CSP information about the company, and the job seeker's potential salary. The authors manipulated how the CSP information was presented and monitored the information accessed during job seekers' decision-making processes. The authors investigated how information presentation affected choices. Findings -The vast majority of talent acquires CSP information in the pre-decision phase of the judgment, compares this information across companies, and trades off this information with the conditions of employment. The authors find that the ease of comparability of corporate social responsibility (CSR) information, expressed by meaningful indicators of CSP, increased preference for high CSP.Research limitations/implications -The study enriches existing studies of voluntary disclosure, which argue that voluntary disclosing sustainability-related information can be a tool of impression management. Practical implications -Companies with a compelling CSP should push for a broadly accepted methodology to benchmark CSP within industry-specific sectors, such as logistics services. Social implications -Potential employees demand that companies should consider their social impact on individuals and society as a whole. To remain attractive for employees companies in transport and logistics industry have to cope with a broader scope of expectations.Originality/value -The authors provide the first analysis on the relevance of CSP information for employer attractiveness in the transport and logistics industry. This research provides insights ...