Title: Cognitive styles in dynamic decision making: a laboratory experiment

Authors: Matteo Cristofaro

Addresses: Department of Management and Law, University of Rome 'Tor Vergata', P.O. Box 3, Via Columbia 2, 00133 Rome, Italy

Abstract: Dynamic decision-making processes of executives are pivotal for a company's performance, especially in hypercompetitive environments in which firms face high discontinuity. In those fast-paced settings, executives constantly interpret the environment and, accordingly, adapt their decisions. This work investigates, in the dynamic decision-making process setting, the differences in terms of cognitive style, rapidity and accuracy, among the recently identified - by the dynamic decision-making literature - adaptive behaviour and the others deviating from it (i.e., fixated, stalled, vagabonding). A laboratory experiment was conducted in which 203 graduate students coped with a dynamic multistep business case and also completed the Myers-Briggs type indicator test. Results show how dynamic decision-making behaviours have some differences in rapidity and accuracy and major differences among cognitive styles. The slight difference between some behaviours, such as adaptive and vagabonding, on cognitive styles previously regarded as uninfluential, has here reemerged as pivotal, raising the interest in their study.

Keywords: cognitive styles; dynamic decision making; personality traits; problem solving; firm performance; adaptive behaviour.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMDM.2016.076840

International Journal of Management and Decision Making, 2016 Vol.15 No.1, pp.53 - 82

Received: 26 Oct 2015
Accepted: 04 Jan 2016
Published online: 01 Jun 2016 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article