How do executive teams make rapid decisions in the high-velocity microcomputer industry? This inductive study of eight microcomputer firms led lo propositions exploring that question. Fast decision makers use more, not less, information than do slow decision makers. The former also develop more, not fewer, alternatives, and use a two-tiered advice process. Conflict resolution and integration among strategic decisions and tactical plans are also critical to the pace of decision making. Finally, fast decisions hased on this pattem of hehaviors lead to superior performance. In October 1984, Gavilan Computer filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11. Despite a $31 million stake from venture capitalists, Gavilan experienced delays and indecision that ultimately cost the firm its early technical and market advantages. The firm's leading-edge technology hecame a "me too " one and competitors flooded its empty market niche. As the firm died, one executive mourned: "We missed the window " (Hof, 1984).

This article has four distinct but related purposes. First, we describe the research setting for assessing human information processing style in terms of the rationalintuitive complementarity. We highlight earlier management study that directly deals with this dimension. Then we review popular instruments for assessing style in rational-intuitive terms. Second, we outline a conceptual model that elaborates the rational-intuitive styles of human information processing into three modes each. There are innovative management studies, and Eastern and Western philosophical bases for this model. We use this background to help synthesize three lines of neurophysiological research to formulate a six-mode human information processing (HIP) metaphor. Third, we use the HIP metaphor to develop an HIP survey with a scale for each mode. This section describes how conceptual definitions are derived from the model with guidance from the rational-intuitive term pairs and the survey item pool. Fina...

Even though intuition is recognized as imperative in strategic thinking management literature is surprisingly silent on the issue. This inquiry thus provides an historical and hermeneutic review of philosophical, psychological and management theory on intuition. It reveals that philosophers conceive intuition as rational while psychologists tend not to. Philosophers do so primarily because intuition is anchored in Ideas, Forms and Archetypes, which are perceived as a priori laws governing and conditioning all existence. The argument is that intuition is the ontological foundation for any normative theory of rationality. Implications for the rationality debate are discussed. Three levels of intuition are discerned and contrasted with analytical thinking. The first and second levels correspond to intuitions from the personal and collective unconscious experience respectively. They can be either introverted or extraverted. The third level corresponds to what some philosophers call the non-dual, integral state of mind. An empirical study including personal interviews with 105 Norwegian top managers indicate that in strategic thinking more emphasis is put on intuition than analysis, especially in exploration of new terrain and technology. They define intuition primarily in accordance with level one. In describing its key features they focus on foresight, new ideas and synthesis. Finally Myers Briggs Type Indicator ® was applied, revealing that they have a strong personality preference for intuition.

Implicit Laboratory Association (ImpLab) is a registered association aimed to foster research and facilitate debate on issues related to implicit cognition. The second annual Workshop of ImpLab was held in June 2007 at Budapest. Cognitive researchers, psychologists, physicists, entrepreneurs, economics and financial experts examined The Role of Intuition in Decision-making and Economics. Participants of the workshop discussed the latest scientific findings of how human intuitive, non-conscious processes could improve business decisions.

This paper presents a field study of decision-making processes in management teams in two organizations. It reviews existing literature on managerial knowledge structures and decision-making, and identifies methodological and conceptual limitations with these approaches. The authors then develop interpretive case studies of two management teams, which focus on the articulated and social methods used to make decisions. They found that both organizations used rules of thumb or heuristic reasoning in their decision-making, that these rules of thumb functioned as headlines of deeper organizational narratives, and that these narratives were grounded in emotional as well as purely rational considerations. We suggest that the term “guiding principle ” usefully integrates our three findings into a descriptive concept that may be further explored in future research of both a descriptive and prescriptive nature.

This paper begins to answer the call to broaden current theories of individual decision-making by including in them the effects of human mood. Grounding our arguments in psychological literature on the effects of mood on information processing, motivation, and decision heuristics, we develop hypotheses about how mood can significantly affect individuals' use of structured decision protocols. In support of our hypotheses, results from an experimental study of complex decision-making suggest that, in situations where a structured decision protocol is the usual method of decision-making, individuals in moderately negative moods are significantly more likely than those in moderately positive moods to: (1) carefully execute all the steps of a structured decision protocol, (2) execute the steps of a structured decision protocol in the correct order, and (3) rely on the outcome of the structured decision protocol as the primary basis for the decision. We discuss these findings in terms of the...

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This paper relates a series of current development in the literature of economics and psychology as they relate to decision making by households and business firms. The first part of the paper reviews recent literature dealing with happiness and subjective wellbeing. In the second part of the paper recent developments in management science that make use of intuition and mental focus are related to firm profitability and improved economic efficiency. Both of these recent developments can provide critical insights into improving the “bottom line ” performance of policy makers, managers and society as a whole at both the macroeconomic and microeconomic levels. These ideas are then used to design to and develop a series of policy suggestions that refocus attention on the concept of subjective well being or happiness as opposed to economic utility maximization as well as the role of intuition and the concept of “flow ” in the decision making process. of top managers. We can summarize these ideas succinctly by focusing on two sets of variables relating to decision making and decision outcome in a two by two matrix summarized in the Table

Web-based financial commentary, in which experts routinely express market-related thought processes, is proposed as a means for college students to learn vicariously about financial markets. Undergraduate business school students from a regional university were exposed to expert market commentary from a single financial Web site for a 6week period. When compared to a control group, students in the experimental group were found to possess higher levels of financial market awareness. Degree of engagement, as approximated by measures of project exposure time and effort, was significantly related to market awareness. Finance majors were found to be more engaged in the process than nonfinance majors. Although this study should be considered exploratory in nature, findings support the notion of using Web-based vicarious learning processes in financial education. Future research can extend the generalizability of these findings, as well as shape vicarious learning mechanisms for use across business disciplines.

Most research on decision making has focused on how human or animal decision makers choose between two or more options, posed in advance by the researchers. The mechanisms by which options are generated for most decisions, however, are not well understood. Models of sequential search have examined the trade-off between continued exploration and choosing one’s current best option, but still cannot explain the processes by which new options are generated. We argue that understanding the origins of options is a crucial but untapped area for decision making research. We explore a number of factors which influence the generation of options, which fall broadly into two categories: psycho-biological and socio-cultural. The former category includes factors such as perceptual biases and associative memory networks. The latter category relies on the incredible human capacity for culture and social learning, which doubtless shape not only our choices but the options available for choice. Our intention is to start a discussion that brings us closer toward understanding the origins of options.