Founder Attributes and Self-Reported Decision-Making Styles in Startup Execution: A Dual-Process Perspective on Strategic and Operational Decision Contexts

Problem: Entrepreneurial decision-making is widely recognized as central to startup outcomes, yet how founders make decisions during the startup execution phase remains underexplored. Prior research rarely distinguishes between strategic decisions (e.g., market entry, scaling) and operational decisions (e.g., coordination, problem-solving), even though these two decision types differ in their uncertainty, reversibility, and cognitive demands. Objective: This study investigates how founder attributes relate to self-reported decision-making styles across strategic and operational decision contexts during startup execution. Methodology: Drawing on Dual-Process Theory, decision-making is viewed as an interplay between intuitive (System 1) and analytical (System 2) cognitive processes. A sequential exploratory mixed-methods design was employed, beginning with semi-structured interviews with 20 Indian startup founders to develop the conceptual framework, followed by quantitative examination using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) on data from 350 funded startup founders, with separate structural models estimated for strategic and operational decision contexts. Results: The findings revealed context-specific patterns of association between founder attributes and self-reported decision-making styles across strategic and operational decision contexts. In the strategic model, cognitive orientation, domain experience, and risk appetite were significantly associated with decision-making style, explaining 49.7% of the variance (R² = 0.497). In the operational model, only risk appetite remained significant, with substantially lower explanatory power (R² = 0.125). Taken together, the findings indicate stronger patterns of association between founder attributes and decision-making style in the strategic context than in the operational context. Conclusions: The study contributes to entrepreneurial cognition research by demonstrating that founder attributes exhibit context-specific patterns of association with decision-making styles. These findings underscore the importance of considering decision context when examining entrepreneurial decision-making.