The role of intuition in executive strategic decision making

Abstract: The current thesis examines the role of intuition in the strategic decision making process of executives. Limited applied research has been conducted on the field of intuitive processes in strategic decision making of top managers, therefore this paper attempts to shed more light on this specific topic. The purpose of this study is to investigate how and to what extent intuition affects executives in the process of strategic decision making. Furthermore, it aims to investigate under which conditions it is more probable for an executive to utilize intuition in the strategic decision making process. In order to accomplish the aforementioned purpose, the authors conducted a series of qualitative personal interviews with five executives, structuring them on the basis of the three strategic decision making dimensions; intuition, rationality and political behaviour. The research was conducted with an abductive approach, since the researchers had to move back and forth, between data and theory, combining deduction and induction in a sense. The collected data were analyzed through the moderating lenses of three decision-specific characteristics and three company characteristics. Following a thorough and extensive analysis of the data, the research supports that intuition has a prominent role in the managerial strategic decision making, being present in all the executives who were interviewed, regardless of their position in the rationality-intuition spectrum. The study indicates that in multiple situations, for instance when information was scarce, the environment was volatile, the situation was highly complex, or an immediate decision was of the essence, managers employed intuitive processes when making crucial decisions that affected the future of their organization. Moreover, the study concluded that managers favoured intuition in strategic decision making in cases of high decision uncertainty and unstable environments, verifying already existing theories on the field.