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The purpose of this paper is to call for inclusion of alternative but complementary conceptual perspectives in entrepreneurial decision-making theory and practice.

A conceptual approach, drawing on two sets of theoretical perspectives relating to decision making of entrepreneurs, is adopted.

The paper presents a conceptual framework of entrepreneurial decision making utilising the intersection between a metacognitive model of the entrepreneurial mindset and the recognition-primed decision-making theory. The paper argues that the convergence of these theoretical viewpoints provides a selection of decision-making processes for entrepreneurs in an uncertain business environment.

Decision-making models and tools are available to entrepreneurs; however, the relevance and applicability are restrained by the complexity and uncertainty of business environments in which entrepreneurs operate. New and more inclusive conceptual perspectives are required to improve the accuracy of decision making.

The study offers a framework that integrates two diverse theoretical dimensions of entrepreneurial decision making. The findings of this study provide direction for practice and for future research on entrepreneurial decision making. The paper intends to encourage researchers to support a new combined theoretical approach and to help practitioners better understand the reasons for entrepreneurial decision failure.

There has been little research about incident management decision making within real-life, dynamic emergencies such as urban fire settings. So this research addresses the research problem: how do incident managers make decisions in urban fire settings? These decision behaviours cover five areas: assessment of the fireground situation, selection of a decision strategy, determination of incident objectives, deployment and management of firefighting resources and ongoing review of the incident. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Case research was used to examine management of different types of fires, through in-depth interviews with a range of incident managers.

This research identified five key behavioural elements associated with incident management in urban fire settings such as their application of a mix of recognition-primed, value based, procedural and formal decision strategies throughout the course of an incident rather than a single style.

The in-depth framework of decision making could provide foundations for later research about other emergency settings. And this research is limited to analytic generalisation (Yin, 2009); so quantitative research such as surveys and large scale interviews could be done to further extend the research for statistical generalisation.

The decision procedures uncovered in this research will assist incident managers in many emergencies, assist policy making and foster the development of future incident managers.

The findings expand the knowledge of how incident managers develop situation awareness, make decisions and plans, implement them, and review the incident as it evolves. Another contribution is the comprehensive framework of decision making developed from these findings.

In recent years there has been a growth of interest in the role played by intuition in entrepreneurial cognition and behavior. However, the significance of the role of affect in intuitive judgment has been underplayed by entrepreneurship researchers. In response to this theoretical and empirical shortcoming we propose recognition-primed decision-making (RPD), the somatic marker hypothesis (SMH), and dual-process theories (in particular Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory: CEST) as complementary frameworks for advancing understanding of the dynamic interplay of cognition and affect in entrepreneurial judgment and decision-making.

The purpose of this paper is to draw on previous work in multiple disciplines to establish a theoretical framework for clinical decision-making that incorporates non-medical factors, such as race/ethnicity, into the way physicians make decisions in the practice of medicine. The proposed Rapid Clinical Decision in Context (RCDC) model attempts to understand the influence of various contextual elements on physicians’ decision-making process. The RCDC model provides a basis for future studies to move beyond documentation of areas where disparities exist to understand the causes of the disparities and designing interventions to address those causes. The paper concludes with a discussion on possible studies to test the proposed model.

The international aviation industry uses a special form of human factors training with their flight deck crews and other teams, called crew resource management (CRM). CRM is designed by psychologists and pilots to reduce errors and accidents and to improve emergency response capability by improving teamwork skills. Key topics include communication, decision making, assertiveness and stress management. CRM courses are now being used in shipping, medicine and the nuclear power industry. Follows an outline of CRM and describes an application in the offshore oil industry with control room operators and emergency command teams.

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.

Distributed performance arrangements are increasingly used by organizations to structure dyadic and team interactions. Unfortunately, distributed teams are no panacea. This chapter reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages associated with the geographical and temporal distribution of team members. An extended discussion of the implications of distributed team performance for individual, team, and organizational decision making is provided, with particular attention paid to selected cultural factors. Best practices and key points are advanced for those stakeholders charged with offsetting the performance decrements in decision making that can result from distribution and culture.

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.