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Decision‐making in early stages of technology‐based service (TBS) innovation projects proves to be challenging. Current failure rates in service innovation are high, while the investments in innovation projects are substantial. Research suggests that enhancing decision‐making in the screening stage could substantially increase success rates. By investigating the screening decision process from an information processing perspective, this article aims to identify antecedents of effective TBS screening decision‐making, and could thus help companies to enhance their decision‐making and reduce innovation project failure rates.

Reviewing literature regarding service innovation, new product screening and decision‐making under uncertainty, we identify antecedents of decision‐making effectiveness in the TBS screening stage. Hypotheses are developed and tested with data from 251 TBS innovation projects.

The study demonstrates the importance of decision‐making team composition, information use and decision perspective for innovation success. Decision‐maker experience and perspective mediate effects of team composition.

Further research is needed to investigate screening decision‐making. The authors provide a research agenda based on our findings.

The study helps screening committees enhance their decision‐making process, by optimizing committee composition, and making better use of decision maker experience and information.

Little is known about how decision makers exploit information and previous experience in dealing with the high levels of ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty in a TBS proposal screening setting. This is the first study to approach the problem from an information processing perspective.

Every employer, unless he or she has no pool of applicants or potential applicants to choose from, engages in hiring choices. While the hiring process may vary, both from one employer to another and from one job to another, some form of screening occurs. In recent years, students of management have noted the proliferation of screening practices in the hiring process, especially in bringing new technologies such as medical and drug testing procedures. Testing and other screening practices, while wide‐ranging both with respect to their ends and means, have raised consistent patterns of concern among job‐seekers, public policy makers and managers themselves. In this monograph a variety of methods of screening and issues of public policy raised by screening procedures are discussed. An overview of United States law regulating the screening process is provided, together with future directions in the area of screening in the US.

We theorize the critical role of angel investors' affective experiences and first impressions in the context of entrepreneurial finance. We develop a model and propositions to illustrate why angel investors make the decision to continue screening, thus explaining why certain investment proposals make it, while others do not.

Drawing on affective events theory and the literature on affective experiences, we theorize how the perceptions of pitches that trigger positive or/and negative physiological arousal, short-lived emotions, and associated thoughts are different, thus allowing us to build new theory of how these different experiences can influence the outcome of the evaluation process in the initial screening stage.

Our model suggests that the initial evaluation unfolds in five stages: perception of an entrepreneurial pitch, physiological arousal, emotions, first impression, and a decision to continue screening. When different manifestations of physiological arousal and subsequent emotions set the tone of first impressions, they can be either a positive, negative, or mixed experience. While positive and mixed first impression can lead to selection, negative first impression can lead to rejection.

We illustrate what is of value for angel investors when they look for new investments, and why certain entrepreneurial pitches lead to the decision to continue screening, while others do not. We propose that what angel investors feel is particularly important in situations where they are not yet making the ultimate decision to invest money but are involved in decisions about whether to continue to spend time to investigate the investment proposal.

Venture capital is a critical source of funding and development of new ventures. The investment decision of venture capitalists (VCs) is a multi-stage assessment process where the entrepreneurs’ characteristics are the most important criteria to determine the decision to accept or to reject the proposal at the screening stage. At this stage, the decision-making of VCs is influenced by their subjective characteristics and their interactions with the entrepreneurs who share the same characteristics as theirs. How do the entrepreneurial experiences of both VCs and entrepreneurs interact and bias the evaluation? Several studies have tried to provide an answer to this still pending question. Research concurs in that entrepreneurial experience drives primarily the screening decisions of VCs. Yet, if many studies have shown that VCs are prone to cognitive biases in their evaluations, research focusing on the relationship between of those biases and entrepreneurial experience in the context of investment decision is scarce. VCs’ cognitive biases have been linked to the subjective characteristics of VCs. Most precisely, many studies have shown that a common bias among investors is the similarity-attraction bias such that VCs’ evaluations improve when VCs and entrepreneurs share the same characteristics. As a result, it is likely that entrepreneurial experience plays a significant role in explaining biases in investment decisions. Overall, research points out the importance of entrepreneurial experience of both VCs and entrepreneurs, their interactions and the cognitive biases shaped by their respective experiences in explaining the investment decisions of VCs at the screening stage.

Research suggests family businesses often pursue risky or aggressive strategies despite the desire to preserve socioemotional wealth (SEW), which is thought to lead to conservativism in family firm strategic decision making. The purpose of this paper is to resolve this apparent contradiction by presenting a model that describes the screening criteria used by family business decision-makers when evaluating strategic opportunities.

The conceptual model relies on insights derived from image theory to resolve apparent contradictions inherent in the SEW perspective’s implications for family firms’ risky strategic decisions.

The proposed model suggests new strategic opportunities in family firms are evaluated through an unconscious, schema-driven decision process and that the preservation of SEW does not preclude risky strategic directions, but instead serves as an unconscious screening criteria for strategic opportunities.

This paper contributes to the literature by expanding the understanding of family-firm strategic decision-making to include considerations of the decision’s fit with the family’s principles, goals and strategic plan rather than solely to overall risk to SEW. Thus, the paper presents a detailed model of family-firm strategic decision-making that relies on insights from image theory.

Prostate and colorectal cancer (CRC) rates are disproportionately high among African‐American men. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of an intervention in which barbers were trained to educate clients about early detection for prostate and CRC.

Working with an advisory panel of local barbers, cancer survivors and clients, educational materials are developed and pilot tested through use of focus groups and cognitive response interviews.

The advisory panel, focus groups, and interviews provide key recommendations for core content, intervention structure, and evaluation strategies. The men suggest a variety of things they want to know about prostate cancer, however the perceived need for CRC information is much broader, suggesting a knowledge gap. The men prefer print materials that are brief, use graphics of real African‐American men, and provide a telephone number they can call for additional information.

Community involvement is key in developing a well‐accepted and culturally‐relevant intervention.

The paper usefully describes the process of developing and pilot testing educational materials for use in an intervention in which barbers would be trained as community health advisors, to educate their clients about CRC screening and informed decision making for prostate cancer screening.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the dominant consumer decision theory models and understand why that theory has received little empirical validation. A “decision waves” theory is proposed – an alternative, multi‐phase approach to decision making using image theory. An approach to validating empirically the multi‐phase theory is outlined.

This conceptual paper examines the foundations of modern consumer decision theory and argues for a more representative model of actual consumer decisions.

Decision waves provide a theoretical approach to represent more accurately consumer decision making and improve understanding in this foundational component of marketing. Decision waves do not change detailed empirical findings: however, they do change the macro perspective of how those findings are assembled for marketing.

An empirical test of decision waves theory is ongoing.

The concepts outlined in this paper will change segmentation, positioning and how tactical plans are developed within the marketing mix, particularly for promotional strategies.

A theoretical approach that represents decision making more accurately will bring us closer to understanding this foundational component of marketing. It provides a basis for differentiation in congested markets.

Purpose – To provide an overview of racial/ethnic disparities in human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, HPV vaccination, and cervical cancer on domestic and international levels.

Design/methodology/approach – The literature, cervical cancer prevention guidelines, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resources were culled to aggregate information on epidemiology, racial/ethnic disparities, and knowledge and attitudes related to HPV, HPV vaccination, and cervical cancer. Original data supplement information about HPV and HPV vaccination knowledge and attitudes.

Findings – Cervical cancer is among the leading causes of female death worldwide, with substantial racial/ethnic and geographic disparities. In the United States, African American and Hispanic women suffer disproportionate cervical cancer incidence and mortality compared to their Caucasian counterparts. Globally, the greatest burden of cervical cancer (and HPV infection) is shouldered by developing regions. Prevention efforts, such as HPV vaccination and adaption of screening programs to resource-poor areas, have the potential to reduce such disparities, but cultural context is critical to successful development and implementation of such interventions.

Research limitations/implications – As this is not a systematic review, but rather a viewpoint on issues related to disparities in cervical cancer, the literature review is not exhaustive.

Practical implications – This chapter provides a context for examining cervical cancer disparities domestically and globally and serves as a starting point for formulating future research.

Originality – This perspective on HPV and cervical cancer presents disparities both within the United States and worldwide. The chapter supplements the literature with new data that provide additional insight into knowledge and attitudes about these health issues.

In order to answer which opportunities are better to pursue, the purpose of this paper is to propose and empirically test a decision-making model for evaluating and selecting entrepreneurial opportunities.

First, the authors identified common evaluation criteria through a systematic review of 45 high quality articles published in top entrepreneurship and management journals between 2000 and 2017. Second, fuzzy screening technique has been employed to offer the decision-making model. Third, the authors used data of six evaluations provided by five experts at a medium-sized biotech firm to test the model.

The study shows that common decision criteria for evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities fall into seven categories. According to these criteria and using fuzzy screening technique, a multi-expert multi-criteria decision-making (ME–MCDM) model has been suggested for evaluating and selecting opportunities.

This model can be served in situations in which decision makers should select a small number of opportunities among the larger set with regard to opportunity profile and minimal information. More opportunities and more decision makers can be included in the model. When the number of opportunities and decision makers are high, it is possible to use programming for fast, accurate and easy calculation.

This study is the first systematic review of opportunity evaluation criteria. It is also the first considering opportunity evaluation as a multi-expert decision-making process.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Chester Barnard's decisional model utilizing the lens of image theory. The main claim is that the individual decision‐making model proposed by Barnard in his Notes on the Significance of Decisive Behavior can be evaluated within the framework of image theory.

The paper performed a comparative analysis of Barnard's and image theory's models of decision making to outline congruence and incongruence between Barnard's early conceptualization of individual decision making and the contemporary understanding of image theory.

The findings provide support to the claim that image theory is an appropriate framework to describe Barnard's model.

The unique contribution of this study is that it provides the first theoretical analysis of Barnard's model of individual decision making. Barnard's model of individual decision making is little known because it was posthumously published in his Notes on the Significance of Decisive Behavior 35 years after Barnard's death.