Purpose A large body of research has analyzed individual psychological characteristics as antecedents of strategic decision-making. However, this research has mainly focused on trait-based characteristics that explain impaired strategic decision outcomes. Recently, PsyCap has been proposed as an alternative driver of strategic decision outcomes that, in contrast to other drivers, can be influenced by management.

Teams of business leaders make most strategic decisions in organizations. However, although a large body of research has analyzed cognitive biases of individual leaders, little is known about how those biases affect teams on the group level. Therefore, on the basis of research into group decision making and group diversity, we analyze demographic diversity and group tenure as two important determinants of overconfidence in groups. We report findings from a quasi-experimental field study iolving 46 management teams, which suggest that diversity and tenure have separate, direct effects on group overconfidence. More specifically, we show that demographic diversity reduces group overconfidence, while group tenure increases it. These findings add a dynamic dimension to the conceptualization of group overconfidence in teams. Keywords: Group overconfidence, demographic diversity, tenure

Empirical research has shown that decision-makers often display distinct risk preferences that are not explained by prospect theory as it currently exists. In particular, decision-makers have been found to act in ways that might reflect individual risk preferences outside of the fourfold pattern predicted by prospect theory. We suggest that this behavior can be explained by integrating personal factors—in addition to the contextual factors proposed by prospect theory—into a unified theory of individual choice under uncertainty. Drawing on recent findings in decision theory and social psychology, we introduce "risk attribution theory" to illustrate how cognitive and affective factors influence the evaluation of risky prospects and eventually lead to distinct individual risk behavior.

This paper builds on behavioral strategy and strategic decision making literatures to propose a stronger integration of information acquisition behaviors in debiasing research. We argue that the advice-seeking behavior of executives—as their dominant way of information acquisition—may have a fundamental effect on cognitive biases in individual judgment. Empirical results of a vignette-based survey of 186 top executives in German SMEs support this claim. We posit that internal and external advice affect individual judgment differently and that external advice, in particular, is likely to be effective for debiasing. These results suggest new avenues for debiasing research that go beyond the active intervention techniques that have been the focus of debiasing research thus far.

On the basis of a sample of 184 top executives, we iestigated the roles of decision quality and perceived uncertainty in the relationship between decision comprehensiveness and performance. Our results show that decision quality mediates a large proportion of the comprehensiveness–performance relationship and may thus provide a more proximate outcome measure of the effect of comprehensiveness. In addition, we found that perceived uncertainty directly affects the level of comprehensiveness in organizations rather than moderating its effect on performance as conceptualized by previous research. Based on the integration of behavioral and information processing theories we suggest that more process-oriented measures such as decision quality and perceived uncertainty may overcome conflicting empirical results in the field.

In this paper, we examine cognitive benefits of scenario planning. Drawing on behavioral decision theory, we analyze the effect of scenario planning on the widely discussed framing bias in decision making as well as on decision quality. In an experiment iolving 252 graduate management students, we find that scenario planning reduces the framing bias and that it has a more positive effect on decision quality than tools traditionally used in strategic planning. Thus, our paper contributes to the discussion analyzing the scenario method's benefits by providing additional support for its positive cognitive consequences as well as the method's aggregate effect on decision quality. It presents evidence that popular strategy tools like scenario planning, whose positive cognitive effects are widely claimed in the literature, may in fact alter biases and decision quality.

This paper analyzes the benefits of a pre-deal purchasing price allocation (pre-deal PPA), which acquirers have come to integrate into an acquisition process to examine the effects of a potential acquisition on the acquirer’s financial statements. The authors take a management perspective and iestigate if the tool improves the comprehensiveness and quality of acquisition decisions. Based on an exploratory analysis using the results of semi-structured interviews with 24 accounting professionals from 19 Germany-based companies, the authors conduct a qualitative content analysis to identify the method’s benefits in the context of friendly acquisitions. The results suggest that, subject to cost-benefit considerations, a pre-deal PPA increases decision quality and leads to more comprehensive acquisition decisions. Furthermore, the paper proposes several best practice approaches to improve the implementation of a pre-deal PPA.

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Wird die Mikroelektronik-Industrie in Deutschland bis 2015 einen Niedergang erleben oder sogar vollständig verschwinden? Wird die Entwicklung der Branche weiterhin vom Mooreschen Gesetz getrieben? Oder wird ein Trend hin zu stärker anwenderorientierten Architekturen – oft auch als „More than Moore“ bezeichnet – der Taktgeber für die Mikroelektronik-Branche in Deutschland? In dieser Studie geben wir nicht nur Antworten auf diese Fragen, sondern zeigen auch auf, welche Implikationen sich daraus sowohl für die Politik als auch für Unternehmen der Branche heute – im Jahr 2011 – ergeben. Ähnlich wie zahlreiche andere Branchen ist die Mikroelektronik weltweit durch zunehmende Komplexität, Volatilität und Dynamik geprägt. Diese Entwicklung stellt das Management von Unternehmen der Mikroelektronik-Industrie vor wachsende Herausforderungen: Eine Vielzahl von Einflussfaktoren aus so unterschiedlichen Feldern wie Politik, Wirtschaft, Technik und Gesellschaft prägt die Branche. Gleichzeitig lassen sich viele zukünftige Entwicklungen nicht eindeutig vorhersagen. Dennoch müssen Führungskräfte Entscheidungen treffen und Maßnahmen einleiten. Dies ist nur möglich, wenn vorhandene Unsicherheiten in der Branche akzeptiert werden und in Unternehmensentscheidungen einfließen. Klassische Planungsinstrumente eignen sich dafür nur in begrenztem Maße, da sie in der Regel nur eine zukünftige Entwicklungsrichtung vorsehen. Die Szenarioplanung dagegen ist ein Planungsinstrument, das in der Lage ist, unterschiedliche Entwicklungsoptionen und unterschiedliche Perspektiven zu erfassen. Herman Kahn, einer der weltweit führenden Szenario-Experten sagte einmal: „Szenarien erlauben Entscheidungsträgern, das Undenkbare zu denken.“1. Sie ermöglichen es Führungskräften, ihre Wahrnehmung zu erweitern, alternative Zukünfte zu durchdenken und auf Veränderungen schneller zu reagieren. Unsere Zukunftsszenarien für die Mikroelektronik-Industrie in Mitteldeutschland unterstützen dieses Bestreben. Auf Basis von zwei Kernunsicherheiten und wichtigen Branchentrends haben wir vier Szenarien für die Industrie im Jahr 2015 entwickelt. Wir hoffen, dass diese Szenarien Sie inspirieren und Ihnen helfen, Chancen und Risiken in dieser Branche erfolgreich zu managen.