Decisions—even strategic decisions—are increasingly made within a context that can be characterized as time-pressured, dynamic, uncertain, and with decision makers having access to inadequate information. In some instances, the situation is so new that there is little or no historical data available. In other cases, there are vast volumes of information but not enough time to process it. In short, we live in a VUCA world. The term “VUCA” has its genesis back at the end of the Cold War and was originally coined to ring in an era marked by increasingly ambiguous, multilateral, and multifaceted challenges in conditions that are Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) (
Hicks and Nicholas 2002). Seminal papers such as that by Allison (
Allison 1969) demonstrate VUCA in action; in particular, the way that many constituent parts combine to create unique contexts at unique time points, unique decisions, and unique consequences. VUCA means that never-to-be repeated conditions provide the background against which decisions get made. This point is further illustrated by recent events in the world around us. During the writing of this paper, geopolitical shifts such as Brexit in the United Kingdom and the election of President Donald Trump seem to indicate that assumptions deemed immutable are less solid than they appear (
https://extranet.cranfield.ac.uk/dana-na/auth/url_default/welcome.cgi). The macro environment of decisions for politicians is substantively different and evolving faster than, for example, just 12 months ago. This is not just true in politics but in many arenas including business, where scandals continue to emerge based on the actions of a very few. In a tightly coupled world, each action has consequential actions and counter actions (
Weick and Roberts 1993) triggering further actions and counter actions, many of which are unpredictable.
This is how VUCA has become the reality that many senior executives in organizations routinely face when making decisions, operational as well as strategic. Given the fluidity of situations, and that facts too, can be emergent, decision-making theory and practice cannot be overly mechanistic. Fluidity in this context is taken to mean a continuous flux, where “rapid, unpredictable change [occurs] in many directions” (
Lane and Maznevski 2014, p. 14). This, in turn, requires continuous adjustments when making sense of a situation, rendering the decision-making process itself fluid. Within this context, new models of decision-making are needed to take account of new organizational realities.
Herein we provide an integrative, iterative, and innovative perspective on decision-making, drawing on “non-rational” or “bottom up” frameworks such as mindfulness and intuition, some of which have been insufficiently integrated into the decision-making literature because they may defy strict “scientific” explanations (see for example,
Dane and Pratt (
2007)). By way of contrast, we contend that by explicitly addressing decision-making from a variety of perspectives, we can generate new insights that address the specific demands of a VUCA world, particularly with respect to decision-making. In doing so we propose ways that new perspectives can amend and/or complement traditional rational approaches. This move to consider non-rational decision-making is also mirrored in economics, where it is increasingly acknowledged that, for example, emotions have a role to play (
Oullier and Basso 2010, p. 296).
In this paper, we have adopted a pluralistic approach that weaves together different perspectives without losing each theoretical contribution. Integration has not been achieved through an assimilative process but instead, a deliberate layering of diversity. Our approach aligns with the current scholarly narrative concerning the deepening of understanding of phenomena. Most particularly, the 2017 Academy of Management Annual Meeting is themed “At the Interface”, which explicates the drive to consider “interstitial spaces”, including those that lie within and between disciplines (
http://aom.org/annualmeeting/theme/). Further, the editorial for the Academy of Management Learning & Education edition (2014) urges scholars to “cross-train” (
Kenworthy 2014). In keeping with this new wave of enquiry, we have been careful not to reconcile different relationships but rather to lay concepts side-by-side and/or juxtapose each perspective as appropriate, thus creating space for multifaceted, contextual decision-making approaches. Based on themes emerging from theory and practice, we have considered five perspectives as a starting point: mindfulness, intuition, wisdom, organizational space, and social improvisation. The aim of this paper is to explore how each perspective contributes to and/or complements current decision-making practices. These perspectives have been recently explored as possible ways to address the VUCA conditions; however, to date each has been studied in isolation, thus further fragmenting (instead of integrating) contributions to the decision-making field. Although each perspective is rooted in a different philosophy and literature, all have attempted to address the fluid nature of contemporary decision-making, and acknowledge the role of awareness in the process. Our inclusive and non-hierarchical stance avoids a reductionist approach and holds all points of view to be equally valid. This pluralistic stance models both our methodology and our contribution to theory; it also has implications for practice.
In keeping with this investigative quality, our methodology is similarly pluralistic, seeking to bring “understanding rather than measurement” to the nature of decisions (
Hernes 2007, p. 143). At the heart of this investigation was the design, delivery, and analysis of a workshop with like-minded academics and practitioners who critiqued our thinking and built upon it. This experience forms the basis for our findings. Approaching the research process as an unfolding (
Hernes 2007), our research question was for guidance, not adherence—as follows: What hidden aspects of the decision-making process are revealed through a multiple-perspective approach? We begin this paper with a description of the five different perspectives on decision-making and highlight their unique contribution to the role of awareness and fluidity in the decision-making process. In drawing on these different views we seek to demonstrate the multi-level nature of decisions, particularly in organizations where strategic choices are rarely the purview of one individual but may involve many groups coming together to discuss and decide. The paper then illustrates an innovative and iterative approach to knowledge creation through the integration of these various facets of decision-making. It concludes with a discussion of the propositions we draw from analyzing the findings from the workshop experience, and suggestions for follow-up research.
1.1. Mindfulness
Mindfulness refers to present-moment, non-judgmental awareness of internal and external phenomena (
Brown and Ryan 2003). A good portion of mindfulness research is concerned with the antecedents and consequences of consciously paying attention to the present moment thereby increasing awareness of the different perspectives and different interpretations that exist within any present moment experience. Mindfulness is a multi-level construct that can be practiced by individuals, for example through meditation, or induced at collective levels (for instance in teams or entire organizations) through non-meditative processes and routines (
Sutcliffe et al. 2016). Mindfulness can equip individuals and groups with self and situational awareness and the ability to pause before reacting (
Garland et al. 2011). This brief pause lends itself to a variety of improved outcomes including less bias and reliance on outmoded mental heuristics (
Fiol and O’Connor 2003).
There is a growing body of empirical evidence that mindfulness promotes bottom-up and non-judgmental, or rather pre-judgmental, processing. In other words, experiencing the situations we encounter in a mindful way enables us to question or at least delay premature judgment. Indeed, recent mindfulness research examining individuals’ decision-making has demonstrated that mindfulness may help people make more effective or even ‘rational’ decisions. A specific example of a mindfulness intervention is Hafenbrack, Kinias and Barsade’s (
Hafenbrack et al. 2013) research where just 15 minutes of mindfulness practice reliably enabled research participants to bypass the sunk cost bias. In terms of individual-level processes, mindfulness training has been linked reliably with increased cognitive skills, for example increased working memory (
Mrazek et al. 2013), insight problem solving (
Ostafin and Kassman 2012), creative performance (
Baas et al. 2014) and several other different measures of intelligence.
Mostly, we believe our minds are open and objective like a court jury; however, without mindfulness, or a similar practice that develops an understanding of one’s subjective experience, our minds may work more like lawyers, selectively choosing arguments and buying into facts that align with our internal and post hoc narratives (
Haidt 2001). Our own research described herein demonstrates this lack of objectivity. Integrating the practices of mindfulness may offer tools to help us pause, and reflect when considering the decision criteria and broader scope of the situation while honouring the challenges of being human. This reflexivity offers a more objective quality of awareness and offers flexibility of position and perspective during a fluid decision-making process.
Mindfulness can be placed within the decision-making literature alongside perspectives that acknowledge the limitations of bounded rationality (
March and Simon 1993) and human inference (
Kahneman et al. 1982). One intention of mindfulness practices is to train what is referred to in the contemplative traditions as “bare attention” (
Gunaratana 2009), a quality of attention that enables phenomenon to be absorbed without judgment, with limited influence of the past, and without immediate categorization into existing cognitive schemas. This characteristic of mindfulness supports equanimity and allows decision makers to treat equally information and data that are both confirmatory and dis-confirmatory of a preferred point of view (
Santorelli 2011). This open approach to processing information is the antithesis of premature cognitive commitment (
Langer 1992, p. 292). It provides an individual with the facility to be conscious of both the “content and context of information” (
Sinclair and Ashkanasy 2005, p. 290) so that it becomes possible to use information outside of pre-established categories. Such freedom from cognitive rigidity can underpin novel idea generation such as seeing a chair for a ladder or a rubber dog toy as an eraser.
Mindfulness challenges paradigms of top-down management control thinking, and instead embraces bottom-up processing at different levels of analysis: internal, interpersonal, and collective (
Sutcliffe et al. 2016). In sum, mindfulness brings light to a quality of attention that has gone relatively under examined in the extant decision-making models. As information is processed, not all of it will be interpreted equally since our prior experiences, habits and biases may color what information we notice and how we absorb it. Studying the mindful processing of information allows researchers to consider how such bottom-up, non- or pre-judgment related processes may prompt decision makers to break habitual, potentially less effective, decision-making patterns in a VUCA world.
1.2. Intuition
Intuition is understood as direct knowing without any use of conscious reasoning (
Sinclair and Ashkanasy 2005). It refers to our ability to process subconsciously or access directly information without the engagement of rational thinking, be it in the form of analysis or development of a logical argument. We think of a problem or see a situation and simply know the answer, albeit we are not aware that any deliberation on our part occurred. That is why intuition is sometimes called ‘knowing what without knowing how’ (
Vaughan 1979). Dual-process theories (
Epstein 1990;
Stanovich and West 2000) suggest that our brain activates different regions, for different reasons, and that various mental processes strengthen certain regions of the brain. For example, Lieberman and colleagues (
Lieberman et al. 2007) demonstrated that asking participants to label their affective state activated the right pre-frontal cortex, thereby dampening the effect of the amygdala, or primitive brain.
Desbordes et al. (
2012) also found reduced activity in the amygdala within a mindfulness group of practitioners when compared to a control group. The mechanism that de-activates one part of the brain to activate another is still under investigation, but there is sufficient evidence to show that some of these functions are physiologically binary.
Whilst brain and mind are not synonymous (
Sinclair 2016), for intuition, which is considered a more primitive evolutionary process, its neural network is often used as a default setting until or unless the situation calls for an intentional employment of reasoning faculty. This conclusion is supported by brain mapping studies that identified two distinct neural systems used for each type of information processing respectively (
Lieberman et al. 2004). Lieberman (
Lieberman 2007;
Lieberman 2000) describes the neural network that is involved in controlled (i.e., conscious) information processing as reflective and the network that serves automatic (i.e., non-conscious) information processing as reflexive. In management terms, a common type of intuitive processing linked to expertise (expert intuition, see (
Dane and Pratt 2007;
Kahneman and Klein 2009)) as a form of fast non-conscious cognition is called System 1 while conscious, deliberate reasoning tends to be called System 2 (
Li 2014). Although there are opposing views on whether intuition always serves as default or whether it runs in parallel and competes for primacy with reasoning (
Evans 2008) the existence of two information processing systems, and their fluid interface, remains undisputed.
The intuitive mechanism is activated in fast-paced, ambiguous, or uncertain situations when we do not have access to adequate information or time to process it (
Behling and Eckel 1991;
Wally and Baum 1994;
Parikh et al. 1994), which are frequent conditions in today’s business environment. Under some circumstances this type of information processing serves us well. The coveted decision speed is attributed to its holistic, non-sequential processing of data that can be likened to a jigsaw puzzle built in a haphazard manner until the resultant, albeit incomplete picture becomes apparent (
Sinclair and Ashkanasy 2005). This is possible because intuition works with (mostly non-verbal) associations (
Epstein 1990), which accelerates the decision-making process. As such, it is inherently suited for non-conscious matching, approximation and/or re-integration of information, rather than highly accurate abstract processes involved for instance in mathematics. In high-pressured situations, we therefore sometimes circumvent time-consuming systematic evaluation and allow our brain to match or reorganize stored memory patterns in an expedient, non-linear way without our conscious intervention (
Simon 1987). Such an approach has been frequently recorded in professions dealing with crises that require a fast decision (
Langan-Fox and Vranic 2011). The result is often a non-conscious intuitive judgment (
Dane and Pratt 2007), the accuracy of which is contingent on the level of domain-specific expertise (
Baylor 2001;
Kahneman and Klein 2009). This means that expert intuition is a reliable decision-making tool in such situations only for those with high levels of expertise. Recent research suggests this kind of intuiting draws on patterns stored in declarative memory (knowing
that) while a different neural configuration may be in place in conjunction with procedural memory (knowing
how) that maps “input stimuli or factual knowledge into actions or ideas” directly while our attention is directed elsewhere (
Dreyfus 2014, p. 23). In view of its different purpose and functionality, Dreyfus calls it System 0.
In either case of processing, the advantage of expert intuition is that it can sift through huge amounts of data and deal efficiently with ambiguous situations that would otherwise stifle or protract deliberation. In less time-pressured contexts, when conscious deliberation has the tendency to interfere with intuitive processing, it can be diverted to another activity. For example, marketing research found that people made a superior choice of rental apartment when facing conflicting criteria if they were distracted by another task before making the final decision (
Dijksterhuis 2004).
More recently, interest in the study of non-traditional decision-making has extended to entrepreneurial intuition (
Crossan et al. 1999;
Hodgkinson et al. 2008) and creative intuition (
Dörfler and Ackermann 2012) that appear to have unique characteristics. Contrary to expert intuition, entrepreneurial decision-making tends to combine memory patterns in a novel and creative way that draws on a broader pool of memory fragments, often reaching beyond the discipline of expertise (
Sinclair 2010). This accounts for a higher success rate of such intuitive decisions among novices (
Baylor 2001) who may not have much ‘technical’ expertise but can connect data associatively with seemingly disparate information gleaned from everyday experiences (
Sutcliffe et al. 2016). It also explains the, sometimes, protracted incubation period before the intuitive decision emerges into consciousness (
Goldberg 1983), as often reported by inventors and scientists (
e.g., Salk 1983;
Monsay 1997). Naturally, this process contradicts the speed of expert intuiting (
Sinclair 2010). Due to its high degree of novelty, it is plausible that the decision-making process is more strongly infused with affect/emotions (
Bechara 2004). One would therefore expect a higher activation of memory patterns stored in the body as somatic markers (
Damasio 1994) as more intuitive information is transmitted through emotional pathways. This is consistent with Dane and Pratt’s understanding of intuition as ‘affectively charged judgments’ (
Dane and Pratt 2007, p. 1008). As a result, entrepreneurial intuition does not necessarily offer the benefit of speed but provides a venue for decisions ‘out of the box’ incorporating aspects that would otherwise go unnoticed. Creative intuition appears to have similar characteristics but emerging theory suggests that its key difference from expert intuition may not lie necessarily in the engagement of different neural networks but rather in its focus on problem-solving (instead of decision-making) that entails a unique dynamic. That is why
Dörfler and Ackerman (
2012) put forward a case for distinguishing between “intuitive judgment [where] the decision aspects are tacitly integrated into a picture about what to do…[and] intuitive insight [where] the components of the domain knowledge are tacitly integrated in a novel way producing knowledge that did not exist before.” We argue that in the VUCA environment of constant flux, decision-making models need to be expanded to include problem-solving mechanisms. The intersection of decision-making and problem-solving is especially poignant in organizational improvisation, as discussed later, where intuition may provide the connecting link (see
Batista and Cunha (
2008)).
We know less about group intuitions (and how they inform decisions) that arise from collective consciousness (
Sinclair and Hamilton 2014). Emerging research into intuitive group problem-solving suggests that individuals, if they are primed to set the same intention, can intuitively uncover various aspects of the same problem that can be then consciously integrated into a much richer and clearer solution that is not contaminated by personal or organizational biases (
Sinclair and Hamilton 2014).
Both individual and group intuition may be better understood through innovative research methods such as those developed by
Petitmengin (
2006, p. 189) to “help a person become aware of the usually unnoticed part of a given cognitive process, and to describe it with precision.” Through her elicitation process it has been possible to ask study participants to recollect intuitions in advance of epileptic fits. Such early and precise identification is a very personal early warning system that can be used by these individuals. This specificity and quality of forecasting was previously believed impossible because it was considered impossible for individuals to generate such minute awareness (
Petitmengin 2006). The Petitmengin elicitation process can also be applied skilfully within groups—a point the methodology of this paper uses, to a limited degree.
Intuition research thus offers a complementary perspective to reasoned decision-making and paves the way to an integrated decision-making model that reflects more accurately the variation in awareness that we hold when we process information in today’s dynamic world. It gives more credence to decisions we cannot fully justify rationally and teaches us to pay more attention to intuitions as a source of information that might otherwise go unnoticed (
Dane 2011). Because of the intangible nature of intuition, it is necessary to create a supportive environment (internally through introspection facilitated by mindfulness and externally through increased confidence in intuitive skills aided by supportive organizational space) that will allow us to access this resource more easily, both internally and externally. On the research front, it forces the development of new methods to study the phenomenon, which can inform other disciplines as well. It has obvious benefits for practice, as it builds a foundation for the development of practical decision-making tools. As
Dane and Pratt (
2007, p. 49) suggest, “research on intuition is inherently practical”.
1.3. Wisdom
In attempting to reconcile Eastern and Western perspectives, Li describes wisdom, (
Li 2012,
2014) as higher-order insights available into complex, dynamic and uncertain issues. Based on the ancient Chinese concept of “Wu”, he expands the Western understanding of wisdom as the evaluation of insight and adds a whole new (Eastern) layer that focuses on the creation of insight. In other words, the former cognitive process deals with exploitation of ideas while the latter is focused on their exploration. This naturally requires different information processing at different levels of consciousness and helps explain findings from entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurs typically seem to use intuition in the edging and retreating phase of sense making (
Teerikangas and Välikangas 2014). Incorporating both processes opens the possibility of a different way of knowing and offers another useful tool for contemporary decision-making. Particularly, it suggests a fluid model for integrating different modes of information processing, as suited to the activity and context of each fleeting moment.
To understand the unique value of the expanded view of wisdom, it is necessary to more fully understand “Wu”. Specifically, “Wu” refers to intuitive imagination aimed at generating insight via metaphor, using mindfulness to enhance receptivity to conflicting information. Within Western scientific disciplines, there are also investigations of practical wisdom (
Shotter and Tsoukas 2014). There are both similarities and differences between the two conceptualizations. In common between the two is the integration of past, present and future; and the integration of thoughts, feelings, and somatics. Whereas “Wu” is imaginative, “phronesis” (practical wisdom) draws one’s attention to a moral framing (
Shotter and Tsoukas 2014, p. 234), which, so far as we can discern, is missing from the Eastern teaching. “Wu” focuses instead on “proactive insight-making” (p. 38), which necessitates the inclusion of conflicting views. As the core process of creative cognition, “Wu”-based intuition therefore encompasses both conscious and non-conscious processes and is much broader, and more conciliatory, than the Western notion of wisdom. To make a clear distinction from the non-conscious System 1 and System 0, and the conscious System 2 (
Evans 2008;
Kahneman 2011), Li calls it System 3 (
Li 2012) and sees all four systems nested in layers like an onion.
The usefulness of “Wu” lies also in its permeability allowing for the integration of contradictions, without the need to reconcile or reduce them. In this way, it helps expand the Western understanding of decision-making and challenges choices that might be false dichotomies stemming from a more limited view (
Li 2014;
Teerikangas and Välikangas 2014). On a systems level, this opens up the possibility of integrating conscious and non-conscious information processing in both System 1/0 and System 2, as it pertains to their respective exploitative and explorative functions. This offers an explanation for parallel and competing (vs. default interventionist) dual-process theories (
Evans 2008) that posit an equal position of both information processing systems, continuously competing for primacy, by proposing a fluid mechanism for their interaction.
In respect of (Western) decision-making, “Wu” is a largely untapped area of investigation. However, it is possible to conceive that its holistic nature allows for the combination and re-combination of both tacit and explicit knowledge. This may be achieved through an integration of intuitively and rationally processed information, which may be more accessible in a mindful state to generate more novel and previously unseen decisions. At this point, in view of the current research paucity, such reasoning remains an educated conjecture.
1.4. Organizational Space
Organizational space is derived from the theory of social space, elaborated by Henry Lefebvre (
Lefebvre 1991). According to the French sociologist (
Lefebvre 1991, pp. 11–12): “space is produced through bringing together the various modalities of space—physical, mental and social—into one logic-epistemological space, the space of social practice, the space occupied by sensory phenomena, including projects of the imagination”. Specifically, organizational space (
Yeung 2005b) may be considered as a form of “social space”, embedded in the organizational system. The process of decision-making does not happen in organizational vacuum (
Nonaka and Takeuchi 1991), it is embedded in the organizational context and related to social interaction. This relatedness occurs in the “space” of knowledge called “Ba” (
Nonaka and Konno 1998;
Von Krogh et al. 2012). “Ba” can be a physical, virtual, mental, or affective (emotional) space, characterized by the emergence of embedded and situated bodies of knowledge (
Nonaka et al. 2006). Within such spaces, it is possible for decision makers to transcend the individual and to become engrossed in a social process of heedful interrelating (
Weick and Roberts 1993).
Intuition, mindfulness, and wisdom have been studied so far mostly at an individual unit of analysis but this ignores our collective and, therefore, social side.
Homo sapiens are social animals and therefore, human systems can be characterized by the emergence of specific group, and social behaviors (
Baylor 2001;
Wegner 1987). By way of example, “group minds” (
DeDeo 2014) are “mental properties that differ from the individual minds out of which they are constructed.” (
Dreyfus 2014, p. 17). As such, the concept of collective mind is more than the sum of single parts (
Sutcliffe et al. 2016). This collective view of decision-making is explored in concepts such as organizational space.
Organizational space is produced by ongoing relations within and between organizations and its configuration is intrinsically dynamic. Since space, in the sense used herein, co-evolves together with the web of intra- and inter-organizational relationships, it is interpreted as a fluidly emerging phenomenon, typical of complex organizational systems (
Maimone and Sinclair 2014). However, with e-mediated businesses, organizational space is not always about the physical. It is a kind of topological configuration emerging from social interactions (
Yeung 2005a, p. 219). Therefore, space is a social-relational reality that goes beyond the material dimension of the architecture of physical spaces and the office lay-out (
Kornberger and Clegg 2004). As such it is possible for one organization to produce several organizational spaces. The theory of organizational space is relevant to decision-making through the patterns that are enacted within an organization, across teams and formal business units. These patterns may operate at the individual level or favor collective decision-making.
Decision-making processes do not occur in a vacuum, but are enacted in a living work place, where different organizational spaces may be present. If we “reason with our body” (
Oullier and Basso 2010, p. 293), i.e., process information intuitively, and our body is contained within a space that includes other individuals, we again see layer upon layer of interaction: architectural, individual, and social. Therefore, we may assume that decisions are “socio-spatially bounded” and awareness to these aspects and how they may fluctuate would contribute to our understanding of decision-making.
Social Improvisation
Continuing the theme of the social nature of organizations and decisions, improvisation embraces the interdependent nature of decision-making. Improvisation in organizational context is understood as “spontaneous, intuition-guided action” (
Crossan and Sorrenti 1997). It has been identified as a “combination of intuition (
Maimone and Sinclair 2014), creativity (
Amabile and Khaire 2008), and bricolage that is driven by time pressures” (
Leybourne and Sadler-Smith 2006). This process of interdependency is best illustrated through the metaphor of the “jazz band”, proposed by Meyer and Weick (
Meyer et al. 1998): once the performance begins each player is free to improvise, the members of a jazz band do not decide in advance what each is going to play. The point is to depart from the original composition but stay close enough that others can synchronize. In strategic decision-making, organizational decision makers, much akin to jazz musicians, are intuitively attuned and respond to each other’s actions to create an organically emerging outcome within predetermined parameters. If they are skilled, their decision-making process becomes “innovative, surprising and adaptive” (
Eisenhardt 1997, p. 2) without compromising quality or proper execution. It is possible that in an environment that supports mindfulness, intuitions are more acutely noticed and wisdom more likely to be generated through exploration and shared through interactions in organizational space.
Organizational improvisation is unlikely to occur in a vacuum. Moorman and Miner (
Moorman and Miner 1998) affirmed that organizational memory is bi-directional: the past influences improvisation in decision-making and improvisation, on the other hand, has an impact on organizational memory. So, we may assume that improvisation in decision-making is also influenced by the dynamics enacted within and across organizational spaces. In a parallel line of theorizing,
Morgeson and Hofmann (
1999) pointed to a similar dynamic suggesting that social structure comes about through the agency of individuals but also limits this agency. Hence, the ability of individuals to improvise is likely to be constrained by the social space in which they find themselves. This has consequences for decision-making. The ability to extemporize could be shaped (limited or accentuated) by the space in which individuals function as well as the extent of their knowledge, which may fluctuate across spaces. Similar to
Baylor (
2001) U-shaped model of intuition that proposes a varied use among experts and novices, improvisation theory suggests that each group improvises differently for different reasons. While experts draw on their extensive expertise and experience (declarative and episodic memory) in the vein of expert intuition, novices reach out for intuition because they lack in this respect (
Batista and Cunha 2008). To compensate for this deficiency, novices resort to improvisation or draw on schemata from other disciplines, thus encouraging thinking out of the box (which is reminiscent of entrepreneurial intuition). That is why, for example, hotel industry recruited experts in revenue management from such distant fields as railroad logistics or plane manufacturing (see
Sinclair and Sinclair (
2009)).
1.5. Summary
In the above review, we have chosen five different perspectives as prisms through which to look at decision-making under VUCA conditions. Although they overlap and relate to each other in multiple ways, each offers a unique contribution to handling the fluid, ambiguous and continuously changing environment of decisions made in today’s business world while shedding light on the richness of awareness to aspects that are under-accounted for in rational perspectives.
In
Figure 1 below, we depict the research framework that has emerged from our literature review, laying the five explored perspectives side by side and using them additively. As the figure illustrates, they contribute to decision-making states at both individual and social levels. This framework provides a visual map of the complex and multi-layered way that these perspectives relate to each other, and to the dynamic and frequently changing states that decision-makers in today’s business world find themselves in. It informs our empirical investigation below, and outlines the relationships between perspectives derived from the literature.
Through our theoretical explorations, we came to view mindfulness as central for all examined processes as it helps the individual and/or collective mind to introspect and switch to ‘broadly focused attention’, which are overall conditions for receptivity to intuition, wisdom, and social improvisation. Mindfulness ‘primes’ our access to intuition, among other things, through the activation of peripheral vision (
Cappon 1993) and non-striving acceptance (
Kabat-Zinn [1990] 2005) that, for Western mind, are often attributes absent from common business practices. That is where we found the Eastern view on wisdom, “Wu”, to be useful: not only does it provide a mechanism for non-judgmental observation but also for non-discriminatory acceptance of conflicting views. And since none of these activities occurs in a vacuum, organizational space offers a physical, psychological, and social environment where introspection (needed for mindfulness, intuition, and wisdom) can flourish but also encourages group processes leading to group intuitions and organizational improvisation. This is an important mechanism for a fluid interaction between individual and social processes. As we concluded earlier, in mindful environments intuitions are more acutely noticed and wisdom can be generated through exploration and shared through interactions in organizational space encouraging further improvisation.