Decision making and uncertainty: The role of heuristics and experience in assessing a politically hazardous environment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Maitland, Elizabeth; Sammartino, Andre
• 署名单位: University of New South Wales Sydney; University of Melbourne
• 刊物名称: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0143-2095
• DOI: 10.1002/smj.2297
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 1554-1578
• 关键词: behavioral strategy; cognition; political hazards; heuristics; decision making

摘要

Heuristics have long been associated with problems of bias and framing error, often on the basis of simulation and laboratory studies. In this field study of a high-stakes strategic decision, we explore an alternative view that heuristics may serve as powerful cognitive tools that enable, rather than limit, decision making in dynamic and uncertain environments. We examine the cognitive efforts of senior decision makers of an inexperienced multinational, as they assessed a potential acquisition in a politically hazardous African country. They applied a diversity of heuristics, some with clear building block rules, to build small world representations of this very uncertain strategic context. More expert individuals drew on experiential learning to build richer representations of the political hazard environment. Copyright (c) 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.