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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.

A topic currently receiving significant academic and practitioner attention is called evidence-based management. The purpose of this paper is to suggest that this approach is sometimes over-sold and may be a fad. Additionally, evidence-based management fails to fully recognize the importance of tacit knowledge, what Kahneman calls system 1. Evidence-based management does provide tools to better use what Kahneman calls system 2, rationality. Decision-makers need to take advantage of both rational and beyond rational processes.

This is an essay, it is not a report of a study. At this point in time, this paper needs thinking, reflection, pondering, more than a data-based study.

Advocates promote evidence-based management in part to help avoid fads, yet evidence-based management itself has many of the characteristics of a fad. Evidence-based management is based on an objective rational view of the world and suggests highly rational methods of decision-making. However, a rational fact-based might not give sufficient credit to instinct and feelings. Decision-makers should take into account facts, evidence, when making decisions, but not ignore intuition, hunches and feelings. This study is learning that decisions use a galaxy of approaches, with both cognitive and affective flexibility.

As with any opinion-based paper, this lacks empirical support. Proponents ask us to believe in evidence-based management. Neither we, the authors of this paper, nor the proponents of evidence-based management can empirically support the ideas offered. An additional limitation is that the paper is written in one language, English. Translation into another language might yield different meanings.

There are advantages for scholars and practitioners to look at the best available evidence. There can be disadvantages in overlooking non-quantifiable factors.

Those who use evidence-based management should also take into account feelings, ethics, aesthetics, creativity, for the betterment of society. To solve wicked problems one needs more than facts and rational analysis.

The overwhelming majority of those writing about evidence-based management are supporters. This study offers a different view. This paper brings new ideas and new thinking to both the extensive fad literature and the huge evidence-based management literature. Evidence-based management is discussed widely. Google Scholar lists more than two million papers in 2019, 2020 and 2021 on evidence-based management. Readers of this journal should critically evaluate this popular set of ideas.

The purpose of this paper is to study the crisis management process for project-based organizations (PBOs) by developing a comprehensive model and propositions.

This paper is based on a conceptual study. A literature review is considered a primary source for studying contemporary research, including 171 publications in total, which embody qualitative, quantitative, conceptual and theoretical studies. For data analysis, content analysis is used, which is comprised of descriptive and thematic analysis.

This study identifies five imperative elements of crisis management for PBOs which include (1) sense-making (information gathering and crisis interpretation), (2) decision-making (accurate and timely decision), (3) response (reactive response), (4) outcome (success/failure) and (5) learning. Based on these findings, this study proposes an integrative model of the interplay between sense-making, decision-making, response, outcome and learning. Furthermore, the findings lead to propositions for each of the elements. The paper contributes to the literature on dynamic capability theory.

This paper explores the crisis management process for PBOs. The proposed model deepens the understanding of the practices and processes of project-based crisis management.

Managers are increasingly looking to adopt the Internet of Things (IoT) to include the vast amount of big data generated in their decision-making processes. The use of IoT might yield many benefits for organizations engaged in civil infrastructure management, but these benefits might be difficult to realize as organizations are not equipped to handle and interpret this data. The purpose of this paper is to understand how IoT adoption affects decision-making processes.

In this paper the changes in the business processes for managing civil infrastructure assets brought about by IoT adoption are analyzed by investigating two case studies within the water management domain. Propositions for effective IoT adoption in decision-making processes are derived.

The results show that decision processes in civil infrastructure asset management have been transformed to deal with the real-time nature of the data. The authors found the need to make organizational and business process changes, development of new capabilities, data provenance and governance and the need for standardization. IoT can have a transformative effect on business processes.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the propositions further.

The paper shows that data provenance is necessary to be able to understand the value and the quality of the data often generated by various organizations. Managers need to adapt new capabilities to be able to interpret the data.

This paper fulfills an identified need to understand how IoT adoption affects decision-making processes in asset management in order to be able to achieve expected benefits and mitigate risk.

This study aims to aid theory building, the use of decision theory (DT) concepts in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) research is examined.

An abductive approach considers two DT concepts, Snowden’s Cynefin framework for sense-making and Keeney’s value-focussed decision analysis, in a systematic literature review of 160 peer-reviewed papers in English.

Around 60 per cent of the papers on decision-making in SSCM come from operational research (OR), which makes explicit use of DT. These are almost all normative and rationalist and focussed on structured decision contexts. Some exceptions seek to address unstructured decision contexts via Complex Adaptive Systems or Soft Systems Methodology. Meanwhile, a second set, around 16 per cent, comes from business ethics and are empirical, behavioural decision research. Although this set does not explicitly refer to DT, the empirical evidence here supports Keeney’s value-focussed analysis.

There is potential for theory building in SSCM using DT, but the research only addresses SSCM research (including corporate responsibility and ethics) and not DT in SCM or wider sustainable development research.

Use of particular decision analysis methods for SSCM may be improved by better understanding different decision contexts.

The research shows potential synthesis with ethical DT absent from DT and SCM research.

Empirical behavioural decision analysis for SSCM is considered alongside normative, rational analysis for the first time. Value-focussed DT appears useful for unstructured decision contexts found in SSCM.

Empirical, behavioural decision analysis for SSCM is considered alongside normative rational analysis for the first time. Value-focussed DT appears useful for unstructured decision contexts found in SSCM.

The purposes of this study were (1) to explore empirical challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and their implications and (2) to organise those challenges into a framework.

In a multiple-case study following an exploratory, qualitative and empirical approach, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted in six cases. Representatives of all cases subsequently participated in an interactive workshop, after which a questionnaire was used to assess the impact and presence of each challenge. A cross-case analysis was performed to situate empirical findings within the literature.

Ten challenges were identified in four areas of dimensioning safety buffers: decision management, responsibilities, methods for dimensioning safety buffers and input data. All challenges had both direct and indirect negative implications for dimensioning safety buffers and were synthesised into a framework.

This study complements the literature on dimensioning safety buffers with qualitative insights into challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and implications in practice.

Practitioners can use the framework to understand and overcome challenges in dimensioning safety buffers and their negative implications.

This study responds to the scarcity of qualitative and empirical studies on dimensioning safety buffers and the absence of any overview of the challenges therein.

In this study, we explored factors driving evidence-based management (EBM) decision-making in Poland which has experienced changes from state-controlled market environments to more competitive ones. Evidence-based management requires the critical use and adaptability to information to deal with complex problems.

In total, 422 Polish managers responded to a telephone survey measuring their perceptions about decision-making culture, styles, competence, and their use of specific sources to derive the evidence to enable them to make evidence-based decisions. Informed by theoretical principles, we used Hayes’ PROCESS macro (Model 4) to examine whether each factor produced direct effects on EBM decision-making and the mediating influence of competence and style in the relationship between culture and perceived evidence-based decision-making.

All three factors correlated positively with perceived evidence-based decision-making. Moreover, style was not predictive of EBM decision-making compared to competence and culture while culture had an imposing effect on decision-making both as a direct effect and indirectly through competence.

This study provides important insights into the perceptual state of EBM among Polish managers. It emphasizes the importance of embracing diverse cultures and improving critical thinking to help managers make more evidence-based decisions during significant changes in the business world.

Crises such as the Coronavirus pandemic pose extraordinary challenges to the decision making in management teams. Teams need to integrate available information quickly to make informed decisions on the spot and update their decisions as new information becomes available. Moreover, making good decisions is hard as it requires sacrifices for the common good, and finally, implementing the decisions made is not easy as it requires persistence in the face of strong counterproductive social pressures.

We provide a “psychology of action” perspective on making team-based management decisions in crisis by introducing collective implementation intentions (We-if-then plans) as a theory-based intervention tool to improve decision processes. We discuss our program of research on forming and acting on We-if-then plans in ad hoc teams facing challenging situations.

Teams with We-if-then plans consistently made more informed decisions when information was socially or temporally distributed, when decision makers had to make sacrifices for the common good, and when strong social pressures opposed acting on their decisions. Preliminary experimental evidence indicates that assigning simple We-if-then plans had similar positive effects as providing a leader to steer team processes.

Our analysis of self-regulated team decisions helps understand and improve how management teams can make and act on good decisions in crises such as the Coronavirus pandemic.

This paper aims to explore how the maieutic role of management accounting (MA) can be sustained in the context of MA digitalization.

The paper begins with practitioners’ descriptions of the context that makes the MA support of non-routine decisions maieutic. To understand how the maieutic characteristics can be sustained in future MA digitalization, the authors then analyze the discourses these practitioners have about artificial intelligence (AI) in providing MA support.

As a basis, the authors’ data show various maieutic characteristics within the use of MA answers in decision-making as well as within the MA process of generating such answers. The paper then identifies three MA digitalization discourses, namely, “computation,” “judgment” and human-AI “interaction” discourse, each with their unique agendas on how AI should be used.

The paper is based on the premises that AI and digitalization are often discussed without sufficient understanding about the context being digitalized. The authors’ data suggest that MA support in non-routine decision-making is fundamentally maieutic, and AI – as it currently stands – is not expected to change this by providing perfect answers. The authors provide novel insights about maieutic MA support and the current discourses on using AI in MA support, and how digitalization does not necessarily compromise maieutic MA support but instead has the potential to sustain or even enhance it.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to provide a clear picture on the cognitive biases affecting managers’ decision-making process of implementing a performance management system (PMS), and to identify managerial practices, measures and the key challenges to manage the cognitive biases in the corporate strategy.

Semi-structured interviews, based on theoretical milestones of performance management and cognitive psychology, gathered from 104 experienced professionals’ evaluations on the likelihood and impact of managers’ cognitive biases in PMS implementation, potential solutions as well as drivers and connected criticalities.

Recurring cognitive biases, together with considerable impacts, emerged in the first, and most strategic, phases of the PMS implementation. The authors developed a roadmap to support corporate transition to integrate behavioral strategy into the PMS implementation aiming to achieve economically and efficiently sound performance.

From the view of proper behavioral strategy affirmation in performance management literature, in a small way, the authors contribute to a desirable taxonomy of cognitive biases so differentiated decision-making scenarios may be built to compare results and draw new observations. Behavioral studies could transversally connect the cognitive biases of performance management to actors’ sociodemographic features and personality types. Practitioners may check biases affecting their organizations by means of the questionnaire and, consequently, adopt the framework illustrated to reduce them.

Performance management literature has constantly investigated positive and negative behavioral factors related to the PMS. This study, instead, makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to the PMS implementation as a decision-making process. The authors propose a theoretical framework that integrates cognitive psychology insights and applies measures to reduce biases.