Search results

This exploratory study aimed to investigate law enforcement officers’ decision-making processes in high-stress scenarios, exploring variations based on experience and how cognitive demands influence officer decision-making processes.

Employing a naturalistic decision-making approach and macrocognitive framework, the study utilizes scenario-based virtual reality simulations and qualitative interviews to examine the decision-making processes of law enforcement officers in high-stress policing contexts.

Thematic coding of interview data from twelve LEOs immediately following a high-stress virtual reality task revealed differences in decision-making processes and cognitive demands between novice and expert officers. Findings also revealed differences in the type of cognitive demands experienced by officers at key points in the simulated scenario.

The authors offer theoretical and practical contributions toward an increased understanding of officer decision-making, factors and conditions that impact LEO decisions and potential mitigation strategies that law enforcement organizations may leverage to improve officer decision-making in high-stress contexts.

To provide a qualitative, in‐depth, naturalistic, empirical inquiry into entrepreneurial decision‐making, through the application of grounded theory methodology.

Application of original Glaser and Strauss grounded theory methodological approach and subsequent works are situated in the comparatively new context of entrepreneurship and small business management. Gathered data are iteratively analysed to produce emergent conceptual categories and their underpinning properties. Emergent substantive theories of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial decision making are discussed against existing decision and entrepreneurship theories.

First, the examination of the appropriateness of applying grounded theory to investigating complex entrepreneurship issues, as analysed through conceptual categories drawn from an empirical study. Second, the theoretical exploration of emergent entrepreneurship bounded practices and associated tasks of decision‐making. Finally, through the revelation of what is inductively achievable, what can be practically learned by researching naturalistic entrepreneurship.

This process of iterative theory building, whilst grounded in a substantive inquiry, holds the capacity to generate further research questions and tentative explanations at broader formal levels. By cross cutting the boundaries of units of analyses – the entrepreneur or associated actors, for example – this results in the maturation of a complex web of human interactivities. From the research reported, questions beyond the substantive case can develop a broader theoretical and practical agenda. For example, issues such as: buying‐in to an established business, the managing of key skills workers in small enterprises, and, entrepreneurial decision‐making in conjunction with other actors’ involvement.

The application of grounded theory emergent research objectives, whilst originating from particular inductive investigations, can become foundations for better understanding broader entrepreneurship questions and practice‐based researched endeavours.

This paper contributes to the identified need for developing the stock of qualitatively bounded research within entrepreneurship and small business inquiry. It develops understanding of both the theoretical and practical nature of entrepreneurship, the managing of an enterprise and the synonymous task of making decisions.

In the last decade naturalistic decision making has been pursued by cognitive psychologists. The focus is on how human experts make decisions under conditions of time pressure and complexity; how they organize and use their knowledge is expected to provide principles for the emerging science of knowledge management. This paper surveys this research and discusses results, which indicate more attention needs to be given to: problem formulation; asking the right questions; use of teams; organization of knowledge; expanding scope of expert systems and case‐based reasoning. Also the method, cognitive task analysis, which is generally used in naturalistic decision making is readily adaptable to business knowledge management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore investigative decision-making processes in the context of major crimes as experienced by the law enforcement agents.

Episodic interviews were conducted with six agents from medium-sized police forces in the UK. Following the framework of naturalistic inquiry, qualitative content analysis took place with the assistance of Atlas.ti software. To ensure the validity of findings, the within method triangulation was preferred, by additionally analysing the interview transcripts with Alceste.

Findings from this study revealed a variety of internal factors at play, shaping the decision-making course into an act of balancing various desired goals. Detectives appear to assess a situation based on their experiences confirming that the naturalistic decision-making model may assist in understanding investigative decision-making.

Due to the busy schedule of law enforcement agents the number of participants was limited and availability difficult; therefore, this study can be thought of as a pilot study that will inspire researchers to use the same method for in-depth understanding of investigative decision-making.

Results captured the ill-defined goals in the police environment and provided ways of decreasing their impact on investigative decision-making thus should help detectives to understand their decision-making limitations and strengths.

This project will enhance the psychological understanding of investigative decision-making.

This project assists in understanding the psychological aspect of investigative decision-making during police duty and provides the opportunity to law enforcement agents to re-evaluate situations in order to improve the investigative decision-making process; while adds to existing literature.

The purpose of the paper is to discuss approaches to decision making used in the emergency services and to relate these to decision making in service encounters in the tourism and leisure sector.

The paper is a conceptual discussion paper that canvasses a range of issues in service encounters, especially the problems of empowerment and service recovery. Although a structured approach to service recovery (often involving 100 per cent guarantees) is popular in the tourism and leisure industry, this precludes spontaneity in solving customers' problems and returning them to a satisfied state. The paper notes that managers have little guidance on how such spontaneity can be effectively accomplished.

The paper argues that much can be learned from the “naturalistic decision making” (NDM) of emergency decision‐makers. The paper therefore provides an assessment of how NDM could be utilised in the services sector.

Training frontline staff in NDM is a means of improving service recovery, and this has implications for recruitment, retention, and staff training. It also provides a justification for trusting experienced frontline staff members.

The study offers a different perspective on decision making in service situations.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute information and recommendations that could better equip emergency managers to prepare for and respond to emergencies and disasters, with a focus on improving their decision‐making capabilities during response.

A questionnaire‐based survey approach was used in this research and 48 different local government organisations participated. These results were examined in conjunction with contemporary emergency management decision‐making literature. A combination of closed and open ended questions was used, enabling qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Results suggest that while there is information available about decision making, not all emergency managers are aware of the existence of this information or understand its relevance to emergency management. It is likely that those who did have a comprehensive understanding of decision making had gained this knowledge through non‐emergency management‐related courses. In total, 71 percent of participants said they would be interested in receiving more support regarding training and practice for decision making in Emergency Operations Centres.

A wide body of research has investigated decision‐making styles. However, this paper shows that in the local government emergency management sector there is little awareness of the understanding of the different decision‐making approaches. In addition, for those organisations surveyed, there is a great desire for further training and practice in decision making. It is thus vital that this need is addressed, to further improve the future response of these organisations to emergencies.

Pew and Mavor (1998) called for an integrative representation of human behavior for use in models of individual combatants and organizations. Models with integrated representation of behavior have only been achieved at rudimentary levels according to those performing the studies (e.g. Pew & Mavor, 1998; Tulving, 2002) and those building the models (e.g. Warwick et al., 2002). This chapter will address aspects of cognitive performance that are important to incorporate into models of combat based on acceptance of theory, strength of empirical data, or for other reasons such as to bridge gaps where incomplete knowledge exists about cognitive behavior and performance. As a starting point, this chapter will assess which of Pew and Mavor’s recommendations are still appropriate as determined by a review of selected literature on cognition and its representation. We will also provide some review and extensions of key literature on cognition and modeling and suggest a way ahead to close the remaining gaps. Different aspects of cognition are described with recent findings, and most are followed by an example of how they have been represented in computer models or a discussion of challenges to their representation in modeling.

There has been a lack of focus on multi-level issues within leadership research. Dionne and Dionne (2009) address this gap in the research by presenting a Monte Carlo simulation examining leadership at four levels of analysis within a group decision-making context. While their work makes a strong contribution to the sciences of leadership, group decision making, and team complexity, many aspects of the research demonstrate potential for great expansion and improvement. Toward this purpose, this commentary discusses and provides suggestions regarding the topics of computer simulation in team research, group decision-making theory, and the modeling of team complexity. It is intended to stimulate continued critical thinking and more innovative, practical, and carefully designed research efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on the naturalistic decision making and cognitive science literature to examine how experienced crisis managers utilize the intuitive and analytical strategies when managing complex incidents. A cognitive model that describes the interplay between strategies is presented and discussed, and the specific role that intuition plays in analytical decision making is addressed.

Designed as a conceptual paper, the extant literature is reviewed to advance discussions on the theme of intuitive and analytical decision making in the naturalistic environment. A new model of expert intuition – the information filtering and intuitive decision model – is presented and evaluated against existing cognitive models from the wider literature.

The paper suggests that experts’ ability to make intuitive decisions is strongly hinged on their information processing skills that allow irrelevant cues to be sifted out while the relevant cues are retained. The paper further revealed that experts generally employ the intuitive mode as their default strategy, drawing on the analytical mode only as conditions warrant.

Prior research has shown that experts often make important task decisions using intuitive or analytical strategies or by combining both, but the sequence these should typically follow is still unresolved. Findings from the intuition model reveal that although intuition often precedes analytical thinking in almost all cases, both strategies exist to offer significant values to decision makers if the basis of their application is well understood.

The purpose of this paper is to report findings related to new product development (NPD) management issues and their corresponding decision‐making approaches undertaken by senior managers.

The study adopts grounded theory research method using interview as the primary data source. 100 NPD management issues, sourced from 16 senior managers from six technology‐based organizations in Malaysia, were investigated and analyzed.

The study revealed four categories of NPD management issues; strategic NPD management issues, NPD project management issues, NPD process and structural issues, and NPD people management issues. The study also found that senior managers apply different patterns of decision‐making approaches in dealing with each category of NPD management issues.

Although the findings from this study are within the specific context of technology‐based organizations in Malaysia, this exploratory study opens up a number of questions for further investigation.

The discussion from this paper should also stimulate senior managers from other organizations or from other locations to reexamine categories of management issues in their organizations and how they approach them from a decision‐making perspective. This reflection could help identify areas which need further decision‐making skills development.

The classification of NPD management issues provides description of NPD management issues and the corresponding common decision‐making approaches. The study which was carried out at technology‐based organizations in Malaysia contributed to narrow down the geographical imbalances of NPD literatures, contributed to the body of NPD management literatures by bridging it with decision‐making theoretical perspective, and contributed to the naturalistic decision research stream.