Role of intuition in strategic decision making

Abstract

Although both intuitive and rational processes are equally important for effective strategic decision making., there is little in the way of applied research on the role of intuition in strategic decision making processes. apart from many popularized treatments of intuition in the literature today, there is only a handful of serious scholarly works on the subject. Of these, the majority are essentially theoretical in nature; field research in management settings is virtually nonexistent. This study examined this neglected but important phenomenon in strategic decision making. We survived senior managers of companies representing computer, banking and utility industries in the United States and found that intuitive processes are used often in organizational decision making. Use of intuitive synthesis was found to be positively related to organizational performance in an unstable environment, but negatively related to it in a stable environment.