Towards a sensed decision‐making approach

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to call attention to the relative neglect in strategic decision‐making research to include a sense dimension, proposing a broadened conceptualization of strategic decision making that accounts for the processes through which managers generate sense when exposed to turbulence in their environments. Design/methodology/approach Based on scholarly writing and empirical‐oriented examples, the paper illustrates how managers cope with unusual and unexpected situations, and discusses fruitful directions for future research. Findings When faced with turbulence, managers generate and communicate sense through believing in and arguing for a certain course of action, and through meeting talk and interaction that entwine with emotions. The focus on both retrospective and prospective orientation of action unfolds a sense dimension integral to which are belief and emotion. Research limitations/implications Important questions for future research concern the role “plausibility” plays in strategic action, the relationship between retrospective and prospective orientation of action, and the information conveyed by emotions. Practical implications The paper could contribute to an increased awareness among practitioners that they can act effectively when coping with turbulence simply by making plausible sense, and encourage reconciliation between calculative rationality and emotion, in practice promoting their complementarity. Originality/value The paper affords a broadened conceptualization of strategic decision making through interrelating scholarly writing on strategic decision making, sense‐making and emotion. It also draws inspiration from Polanyi's work on tacit dimension and knowing, furthering an understanding of how retrospective and prospective orientation unfold in connection with a tacit relation, constituting a so‐called sense‐made reality.

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