Intuition in Strategic Decision Making: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

Proceedings of The 5th World Conference on Management, Business and Economics

Year: 2023

DOI:

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Intuition in Strategic Decision Making: Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

Ioannis Thanos

 

ABSTRACT: 

Several studies advocate that senior executives might rely on their intuition when making important (a.k.a. strategic) decisions. This paper aims to review the academic literature on the topic of Intuition in Strategic Decision Making (SDM). To do so, a manual search using keywords was conducted in popular management and strategy journals. This process resulted in 22 studies with unique samples which formed the basis of the literature review. These 22 studies were then categorised based on the type of their research, their research design, their data collection methods and their geographic location of the sample. The results suggested that literature on intuition in SDM is still in its early stages but is growing over the years. Also, most of the papers have adopted quantitative methods, a cross-sectional research design and have relied on survey research to collect data. Finally, most of the papers have attempted to explore whether intuition leads to positive decision and organization outcomes. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research.

keywords: Intuition, Strategic Decision Making, Intuitive synthesis, Strategic Management