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In the closing decades of the twentieth, and at the start of the twenty‐first, centuries, attention has again turned to the critical role of intuition in effective managerial decision making. This paper examines the history of intuition in management thought by tracing its origins to Chester I. Barnard. This paper reveals not only the intellectual roots linking Barnard’s conceptualization of intuition in management thought to, among others, the influential works of the economist and sociologist, Vilfredo Pareto; Lawrence Henderson’s influence on Barnard through Henderson’s leadership and direction of the Harvard Pareto Circle; the works of the early pragmatist John Dewey; Humphrey’s The Nature of Learning; and Koffka’s Principles of Gestalt Psychology. Further, Barnard’s conceptualization of intuition foreshadowed by nearly two decades nearly all of Polanyi’s thinking and elaboration of tacit knowledge. This paper also examines Barnard’s and Simon’s differing views on intuition and provides a brief overview of contemporary research on intuition in managerial decision making.

External environment drives established enterprises to employ management innovation. Drawing on dual-process theories, this paper purports to investigate TMT's intuitive and rational decision-making styles as mediating roles between perceived environmental turbulences and management innovation, and explain how organizational slack play an critical moderating role.

SPSS 25 is used to test 120 established enterprises' top management team (TMT) samples in China, and the moderated mediation model is empirically tested by using hierarchical regression analysis and conditional process analysis.

Perceived environmental turbulences promotes management innovation. Organizational slack as contextual variable influences the relationship between technology turbulence and TMT's decision-making styles. Interestingly, only perceived technology turbulence indirectly affects management innovation through TMT's intuitive decision-making when moderated by organizational slack. However, the indirect effect from perceived market turbulence to management innovation through TMT's rational decision-making is not significant when moderated by organizational slack.

Based on management innovation's human agency perspective, TMT's decision-making styles have not been discussed in research on management innovation. This paper sheds light on TMT's decision-making styles as mediating role.

Studies investigating intuition from a cultural and cross‐cultural perspective have a long tradition in various disciplines but, due to the increased internationalization of business, an understanding of the mental lives of other cultures became one of the priorities of management practitioners and theoreticians. Cultures of Anglo‐American and East Asian origins have drawn particular attention. However, an analysis of management research studies and those in other disciplines shows that the former do not back up the “intuitive East versus analytical West” pattern set by the latter. The article aims at discussing this discrepancy, its origins as well as the implication for the managerial practice.

The article provides an overview of the various concepts of intuition and methods of measuring it across cultures. It seeks to understand how various epistemological assumptions incorporated in the research affected the results obtained. An aspect under particular scrutiny in the article is the concept of cognitive style, which is employed frequently in management studies.

One explanation for inconsistent results is a premature effort of management science to test a hypothesis generated by other disciplines, applying different conceptualizations, definitions, methodologies as well as populations. The conclusion is that the cross‐cultural research in management is in need of a more exploratory research, paying attention to the specificity of management context and local knowledge.

The article proposes that a methodology that potentially has a capacity to meet these requirements is the narrative approach. Possible implications of this observation are discussed in the context of multicultural teams management practice.

The article provides useful information on managerial intuition and methods of measuring it across cultures.

This qualitative study of managers’ use of intuition in the selection process aimed to understand if and how managers use intuition in employee hiring decisions and suggest ways in which the use of intuition might be improved. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with managers from a range of backgrounds, and with varying experience of recruitment and selection.

Findings revealed that reasons for the use of intuition included personal preferences, resource constraints and recognition of the limitations of more structured approaches. Intuition was used an indicator for performance, personality and person-environment fit. Intuition tended to be used with requisite caution; participants were aware of its limits, the potential for bias and the difficulties in justifying its use; several participants used their intuitions in concert with more structured, non-intuition based approaches.

The small-scale investigative study has limited generalisability. The paper concludes with five specific recommendations on how to improve managers’ understanding and use of intuition in employee selection.

Despite increased interest in intuition in management there is a paucity of qualitative studies of intuition-in-use in management in general and in personnel in particular. This research helps to fill this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to examine conceptual and theoretical links between intuition and coaching; investigate accomplished coaches' practical experiences of intuition; identify skill set of an intuitive coach; discuss implications of findings for coaches', HRD professionals', and line managers' learning and development.

In‐depth, semi‐structured, individual interviews with 14 accomplished experienced executive coaches (eight males and six females) averaging 14.5 years as a coach.

Outline of core attributes of an intuitive coach.

Immersion in experience, a reflective approach to practice, effective feedback and supervision, and attending to personal well‐being are likely to enable coaches, HRD practitioners and line managers to take a more informed and intelligent approach to “going with their gut” in coaching and other situations where inter‐ and intra‐personal awareness are important.

Gender‐centred perspectives of women managers and women in general characterise them as being more intuitive than male managers and men in general. Evidence for gender differences in cognitive style was sought by administering the Cognitive Style Index, a measure of intuition analysis, to three UK samples of managers and three UK samples of non‐managers. Results indicate that there is no difference between female and male managers in terms of intuitive orientation, that female non‐managers are more analytical (less intuitive) than male non‐managers and more analytical than female managers. This lack of support for stereotypic characterisation of women managers and women in general as being more intuitive than their male equivalents is discussed within the context of structural and gendered cultural perspectives on behaviour in organisations.

The purpose of this paper is to deepen our understanding of the philosophical and scientific pedigree of the concept of “common sense”, and explore the implications for managerial decision‐makers.

After examining the management literature on this topic, a brief history of the notion and philosophy of common sense is followed by a review of recent findings in cognitive science and other fields and a discussion of implications for managerial decision‐making.

The notion of common sense has a stable perceptual basis in the makeup of the human mind, as has been shown by philosophers and scientists. Common sense intuitions serve as the basis for making sense of the world: visual perception, scientific reasoning, language, psychology, mathematics, and moral judgments are all rooted in “mental hardware” of common sense. While it is a necessary element of human cognition, common sense can nevertheless lead us astray if we are unaware of its contours and limitations, which are outlined in this paper.

Understanding that the mind comes equipped with a host of common sense mental instincts will have an impact on both one's own decision‐making processes, and how decision‐makers attempt to influence others.

Based on original research as well as literature from a variety of disciplines, this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the philosophical and scientific pedigree of “common sense” and its implications for decision‐makers.

This study aims to investigate decision‐making processes and to identify factors which influence managers in the selection of job applicants' CVs and how these factors differ from the firm's recruitment and selection policy.

Twenty‐four semi‐structured interviews were conducted among HR managers or similar staff members responsible for recruiting and selection in small, medium, and large‐sized Portuguese firms. The interview comprised two parts: description of the selection policies that they used followed by a CV assessment game to understand decisions regarding the acceptance of a specific candidate.

Interviewees' narratives are similar, describing a step‐by‐step process based on the firm's explicit policy and the model of a prediction of the job candidates' future performance based on subjective criteria.

Possibly, the results described are related to the research methodology – more specifically the use of a fictional set of CVs where the decisions made do not have any consequences. At the same time, managers are more relaxed when playing the “CV game” and tend to adopt more genuine and usual behaviours.

The paper calls for an integrative practice in CV analysis combining both the structured and rational dimension and the informal dimension (tacit knowledge, emotion and intuition).

The paper stresses the paradoxical behaviour of practitioners. On the one hand, the “good” of rational procedures is part of their rhetoric; on the other hand, the use of emotion and intuition is revealed in their practices.

Strategy process research has made considerable progress over the last 20 years and has produced a vast body of literature. This valuable contribution, however, has not adequately examined the relationships between the characteristics of the strategy process. This study aims to fill this gap by providing evidence on the relationships between the characteristics of the process of making strategic decisions (SDs) in a new setting.

The study uses quantitative and qualitative methods.

Based on quantitative and qualitative evidence from a sample of Egyptian companies, it was found that decision makers could be simultaneously rational, political and/or intuitive.

The study recommends further research to develop new constructs of the SD making process the way in which the multi‐dimensional nature of this organic process can be considered.

The SD making process can be multi‐dimensional

The paper examines the relationships between the characteristics of the strategy process. It provides evidence on the relationships between the characteristics of the process of making strategic decisions (SDs) in a new setting.

Explains why, of all organizations at risk in the current economic recession, small businesses are the most vulnerable. Confirms that downturns are typically rapid and the prognosis poor, and that the emotional and financial hardships of personal bankruptcy are often severe. Challenges the popular management literature which urges decision makers to follow their intuition, on the ground that intuition is frequently biased and therefore likely to result in the wrong choices. In contrast to the intuitive response to crisis, which is contraction, seeks to demonstrate, through two case studies of small solicitors′ firms, why expansion, although it is apparently the more risky option, may be the best means of survival.