Search results

This article aims to trace the historical development of the behavioral strategy (BS) field, which implements psychology in strategic management. Mainly, it provides a contextual understanding of how this stream of research has historically evolved and what relevant future trajectories are. This work is part of the “over half a century of Management Decision” celebrative and informal Journal section.

We consider BS literature produced in management decision (MD), the oldest and longest-running scholarly publication in management, as a proxy for the evolution of management thought. Through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) process, we collected – via the MD website and Scopus – a sample of 97 BS articles published in MD from its foundation (1967) until today (2024). Regarding the analysis, we adopted a Reflexive Thematic Analysis approach to synthesize the main BS topics, then read from a historical perspective regarding three “eras” over which the literature developed. Selected international literature outside the Journal’s boundaries was considered to complement this historical analysis.

Historically, within the BS field, the interest passed from the rules to rationally govern strategic decision-making processes, to studying what causes cognitive errors, to understanding how to avoid biases and to being prepared for dramatic changes. The article also identifies six future research trajectories, namely “positive heuristics,” “context-embedded mental processes,” “non-conventional thinking,” “cognitive evolutionary triggers,” “debiasing strategies” and “behavioral theories for new strategic challenges” that future research could investigate.

The limitation of the study lies in its exclusive focus on MD for investigating the historical evolution of BS, thereby overlooking critical contributions from other journals. Therefore, MD’s editorial preferences have influenced results. A comprehensive SLR on the BS field is still needed, requiring broader journal coverage to mitigate selection biases and enhance field appraisal.

This contribution is the first to offer a historical evolutionary view of the BS field, complementing the few other reviews on this stream of research. This fills a gap in the study of the evolution of management thought.

This study aims to investigate the relationships between managers’ cognitive styles, dynamic managerial capabilities and firms’ perceived international performance. The study is based on cognitive-experiential self-theory, dynamic managerial capabilities and international entrepreneurship.

Data were collected from 283 managers of small medium enterprises (SMEs) in Türkiye, an emerging economy. The research was conducted using quantitative methods, and Smart partial least squares (PLS) 4 software was used for data analysis. The data were examined through structural equation modelling and mediation analyses.

Findings indicate that rational cognitive styles positively influence managerial human capital, managerial social capital, managerial cognition and perceived international performance. However, the effect of intuitive cognitive styles was confirmed only on managerial cognition. Additionally, it was found that managerial cognition positively affects perceived international performance, whereas managerial social capital has a negative impact. However, the effects of managerial human capital could not be confirmed. Moreover, a full mediation relationship of managerial cognition between intuitive cognitive styles and perceived international performance was identified.

This research carves out a unique niche by synergizing cognitive-experiential self-theory with dynamic managerial capabilities to investigate their conjoined effect on firms’ international performance, an area previously underexplored. Unveiling insights from burgeoning economies like Türkiye enriches the existing body of knowledge, offering substantial contributions to the field of international business.

Managers must make numerous strategic decisions in order to initiate and implement a business model innovation (BMI). This paper examines how managers perceive the management team interacts when making BMI decisions. The paper also investigates how group biases and board members’ risk willingness affect this process.

Empirical data were collected through 26 in-depth interviews with German managing directors from 13 companies in four industries (mobility, manufacturing, healthcare and energy) to explore three research questions: (1) What group effects are prevalent in BMI group decision-making? (2) What are the key characteristics of BMI group decisions? And (3) what are the potential relationships between BMI group decision-making and managers' risk willingness? A thematic analysis based on Gioia's guidelines was conducted to identify themes in the comprehensive dataset.

First, the results show four typical group biases in BMI group decisions: Groupthink, social influence, hidden profile and group polarization. Findings show that the hidden profile paradigm and groupthink theory are essential in the context of BMI decisions. Second, we developed a BMI decision matrix, including the following key characteristics of BMI group decision-making managerial cohesion, conflict readiness and information- and emotion-based decision behavior. Third, in contrast to previous literature, we found that individual risk aversion can improve the quality of BMI decisions.

This paper provides managers with an opportunity to become aware of group biases that may impede their strategic BMI decisions. Specifically, it points out that managers should consider the key cognitive constraints due to their interactions when making BMI decisions. This work also highlights the importance of risk-averse decision-makers on boards.

This qualitative study contributes to the literature on decision-making by revealing key cognitive group biases in strategic decision-making. This study also enriches the behavioral science research stream of the BMI literature by attributing a critical influence on the quality of BMI decisions to managers' group interactions. In addition, this article provides new perspectives on managers' risk aversion in strategic decision-making.

The study aims to identify and understand the underlying behavioral tendencies and motivations influencing investor sentiments and examines the relationship between these underlying factors and investment decisions during the COVID-19-induced financial risks.

The study uses the primary data and information collected from 300 Indian retail equity investors using a nonprobability sampling technique, specifically purposive and snowball sampling. This research uses the insights from Phuoc Luong and Thi Thu Ha (2011) and Shefrin (2002) to delineate behavioral factors influencing investment decisions. Structural equation modeling estimates the causal relationship between underlying behavioral factors and investment decisions during the COVID-19-induced financial risks.

The study establishes that the “Regret Aversion,” “Gambler’s Fallacy” and “Greed” significantly influence investment decisions, and provide a comprehensive understanding of how psychological motivations shape investor behavior. Notably, “Mental Accounting” and “Conservatism” exhibit insignificance, possibly influenced by the unique socioeconomic context of the pandemic. The research contributes to 35% of variance understanding and prompts the researchers and policymakers to tailor investment strategies aligned to these behavioral tendencies.

The findings hold policy implications for investors and policymakers and provide tailored recommendations including investor education programs and regulatory measures to ensure a resilient and informed investment community in the context of India's evolving financial landscapes.

Theoretically, behavior tendencies and motivations have been strongly linked to investment decisions in the stock market. Yet, empirical evidence on this relationship is limited in developing countries where investors focus on risk management. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to document the influence of underlying behavioral tendencies and motivation factors on investment decisions regarding retail equity in a developing country.

Focused feedback, such as mentoring and coaching, is a crucial ingredient for generating the intellectual capital needed for successful venture creation and has become a structural resource offered to entrepreneurs in business incubator/accelerator programs. Yet so far, literature has remained silent on the way that entrepreneurs differ in their engagement with focused feedback in such programs. This study poses the question of how focused feedback engagement shapes cognitive development during value creation (i.e. business opportunity development), aimed at the construction of a taxonomy of such feedback engagement.

Focusing on cognitive learning outcomes, we carried out a qualitative analysis using NVivo to perform content analysis on the logbooks of 70 entrepreneurs engaged in business opportunity development in a highly regarded accelerator program.

Results show that engagement with focused feedback and its effects relate to the state of tangibility of the entrepreneur’s value offer and to the amount of prior entrepreneurial experience. We also develop a promising taxonomy to classify entrepreneurs on their learning needs and outcomes (e.g. procedural versus declarative knowledge).

This study brings together types of human learning (types of knowledge acquired) with types of focused feedback. This connection has been speculated to exist in entrepreneurial settings; this study provides strong initial evidence that argues for more explicit consideration in practice. Adding the intellectual capital perspective further enabled this study to better address implications for practice as well as motivate powerful new directions for research.

Expanding on the real-world financial market framework and considering the current market turmoil, with cryptocurrencies (where contracts for difference (CFDs) are extremely common) (Hasso et al., 2019) displaying unprecedented volatility, the authors aim to test in an online laboratory setting whether displaying a risk warning message is truly effective in reducing the level of risk taken and whether the placement of this method makes a difference.

To explore the impact of risk disclosure framing on risk-taking behavior, the authors conducted an online pair-wise lottery choice experiment. In addition to manipulating risk awareness through the presence or absence of risk warning messages of varying intensity, the authors also considered dynamic inconsistency, cognitive ability and questionnaire-based financial risk tolerance (FRT) scores. The authors aimed to identify potential relationships between these variables and experimentally elicited risk aversion. The authors' study offers valuable insights into the complex nature of risky decision-making and sheds light on the importance of considering dynamic inconsistency in addition to risk awareness and aversion.

The authors' results provide statistical evidence for the efficacy of informative and very salient messages in mitigating risky decision, hinting at several policy implications. The authors also provide some statistical evidence in support of the relationship between cognitive abilities and risk preferences. The authors detect that individual with low cognitive abilities scores display great risk aversion.

This study investigates the impact of risk warning messages on investment decisions in an online laboratory setting – a unique approach. However, the authors go beyond this and also examine the potential influence of dynamic inconsistency on decision-making, adding further value to the literature on this topic. To ensure a comprehensive understanding of the participants, the authors collect data on cognitive ability and FRT using questionnaires. This study provides a simple and cost-effective framework that can be easily replicated in future research – a valuable contribution to the field.

Organisational responses to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals depend on the competency and mindset of business leaders to lead responsibly. This study is informed and underpinned by the Principles of Responsible Management Education. This study aims to examine how embedding the “sustainability mindset principles” within a university programme can contribute to responsible management education and, by extension, leadership development.

An illustrative case study using 84 students was applied, including undergraduate, postgraduate and executive Master of Business Administration students. An exploratory, qualitative design was followed, primarily adopting focus groups.

Evidenced learning gains in connecting sustainability knowledge with personal beliefs and behaviours, provide a compelling basis for educational and business practitioners to focus on the sustainability mindset principles (SMPs). Mapping of mindset against leading global competency frameworks provides important theoretical insight. Learning is illustrated through multiple dimensions (i.e. cognitive, behavioural and affective) to inform leadership development approaches.

The mapping of sustainability competency frameworks against the SMP, alongside qualitative research insights, provides a compelling basis for further research into the learning gains from embedding the mindset principles. The situated nature of the study and the lack of longitudinal measurement of what students take forward into their lives and workplaces is a limiting factor to be considered.

This study evidences the value of “whole-person” learning for responsible management, which can helpfully inform the design of both educational and workplace leadership development programmes.

This study is original in the pedagogic examination of the learning dimensions of the SMPs in a Business and Management programme. It also offers new insights in terms of the implications for leadership development.

Are there smart ways to find heuristics? What are the common principles behind heuristics? We propose an integrative definition of heuristics, based on insights that apply to all heuristics, and put forward meta-heuristics for discovering heuristics.

We employ Herbert Simon’s metaphor that human behavior is shaped by the scissors of the mind and its environment. We present heuristics from different domains and multiple sources, including scholarly literature, practitioner-reports and ancient texts.

Heuristics are simple, actionable principles for behavior that can take different forms, including that of computational algorithms and qualitative rules-of-thumb, cast into proverbs or folk-wisdom. We introduce heuristics for tasks ranging from management to writing and warfare. We report 13 meta-heuristics for discovering new heuristics and identify four principles behind them and all other heuristics: Those principles concern the (1) plurality, (2) correspondence, (3) connectedness of heuristics and environments and (4) the interdisciplinary nature of the scissors’ blades with respect to research fields and methodology.

We take a fresh look at Simon’s scissors-metaphor and employ it to derive an integrative perspective that includes a study of meta-heuristics.

This study aims to examine the impact of manager sentiment on the firm performance (FP) of Indian-listed nonfinancial firms. Further, it endeavors to investigate the moderating role of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and environment, social and governance (ESG) transparency in this relationship.

A noble manager sentiment is introduced using FinBERT, a bidirectional encoder representation from a transformers (BERT)-type large language model. Using this deep learning-based natural language processing approach implemented through a Python-generated algorithm, this study constructs a manager sentiment for each firm and year based on the management discussions and analysis (MD&A) report. This research uses the system GMM to examine how manager sentiment affects FP.

The empirical results suggest that managers’ optimistic outlook in MD&A corporate disclosure sections tends to present higher performance. This positive association remains consistent after several robustness checks – using propensity score matching and instrumental variable approach to address further endogeneity, using alternative proxies of manager sentiment and FP and conducting subsample analysis based on financial constraints. Furthermore, the authors observe that the relationship is more pronounced for ESG-disclosed firms and during the low EPU.

The results demonstrate that the manager sentiment strongly predicts FP. Thus, this study may provide valuable insight for academics, practitioners, investors, corporates and policymakers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to predict FP by using FinBERT-based managerial sentiment, particularly in an emerging market context.

This study aims to investigate the factors affecting the professional judgment of auditors in Iraq (personality type, audit firm size and age).

The statistical population includes 1,750 participants, and the sample size was determined to be 309 participants using Cochran’s sampling formula. The required data has been collected through a questionnaire. Regression factor analysis, Kolmogorov–Smirnov, t and Friedman(f) tests were used to analyze the variables and examine their relationships.

The results show a significant relationship between neuroticism, extroversion, flexibility, agreeableness and conscientiousness and auditors’ professional judgment. No relationship was observed between the size of the auditing firm and professional judgment. The results also showed a significant relationship between seniority and auditors’ professional judgment.

This study will help increase the knowledge of investors and regulators, providing information to researchers and those interested in auditors’ professional judgment. It can also be a starting point for research in this field. This research investigates the auditor characteristics, including personality traits of auditors, audit firms’ size and age and their impact on auditors’ professional judgment.