Adaptive Decision Making in Complex Environments
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X). This special issue belongs to the section "Cognition".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 15
Special Issue Editor
Interests: organization science; management and leadership; crisis management; cognitive psychology; decision making; system dynamics/systems thinking; complexity theory and complex systems; preparedness and societal safety/security; military command and control (c2); artificial intelligence and machine learning; simulation and games; quantitative methods
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Researchers have studied cognitive processing for decades, including its determinants and outcomes. One has sought to uncover the personal traits and preferences (i.e., cognitive styles) that are key to effective and efficient decision making in a wide range of practical contexts. Recently, the focus has shifted towards the adaptability of decision processes in a world that has become increasingly complex, a type of “wickedness” described as VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous). The global challenges are as multifaceted as they are profound: climate crisis, political crisis, financial crisis, food crisis, health crisis, etc. Researchers have even invented a term for the phenomenon that multiple simultaneous crises tend to interact and reinforce each other on a global scale: polycrisis. Regarding the adaptability of cognitive processing to dramatically changing contexts, the question becomes: what combinations of cognitive styles are best suited for decision making under such demanding conditions? For example, is it better to be intuitive (preferring quick and effortless decision making grounded in previous experience), or analytic (preferring more detailed, sequential, effortful decision making) when the context changes from calm to intense and chaotic in a matter of seconds or minutes – which may be the case in, for example, complex military operations. Increased reliance on Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a tool to support decision-making adds another layer of complexity to the equation. The relationship between combinations of cognitive styles, adaptability of decision processes, and outcomes in VUCA contexts remains understudied and needs to be illuminated further through rigorous empirical research. This Special Issue seeks to advance our knowledge on how individual factors, such as cognitive styles, are instrumental to effective decision making in the most challenging contexts we face today and in the future.
Topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
- Decision-making processes and adaptability in VUCA environments;
- The impact of individual (e.g., personality and cognitive ability) and contextual (e.g., complexity and uncertainty) factors on the adaptability of cognitive processing;
- Relationships between intuitive and analytic cognitive styles, cognitive processing, and performance in diverse contexts;
- Decision-making within preparedness and societal safety/security;
- Disaster and crisis management at political, strategic, operational, and tactical levels;
- Artificial Intelligence to support decision making in VUCA environments;
- Complexity, chaos, and adaptive decision-making;
- Dynamic systems, systemic crises, and polycrisis;
- Naturalistic Decision-Making (NDM) and Dynamic Decision-Making (DDM).
Submissions using quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods approaches are welcome.
Dr. Bjørn T. Bakken
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- cognitive styles
- decision making
- cognitive processing
- intuition
- analysis
- crisis management
- VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous)
- adaptability
- preparedness
- safety
- security
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