Date of Award

2018

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (School of Arts and Sciences)

Schools and Centres

Arts & Sciences

First Supervisor

Dr Hugo Gonzales

Second Supervisor

Professor Shabnam Mousavi

Abstract

Many theories have been advanced as to how human beings make decisions. The rational choice models that dominate management science, operations research, and managerial economics and finance assume that an operational knowledge of all possible options, their probabilities and consequences is pervasive and ignore uncertainty. In business the assumption is that Homo Economicus is a rational maximiser of self-interest, but business managers frequently do not adhere to the normative procedures of rational choice. Consequently, there is a mismatch between management theory, economic theory and decision-making reality. This thesis explores the decision styles exhibited by business decision-makers in Australia, USA, India and Canada, and looks at the influence of management level, age, gender, and personality. Using self-report online survey data from 837 business decision-makers this thesis uses three decision style instruments - the Rational Experiential Inventory (REI)(Pacini & Epstein, 1999), Preference for Intuition or Deliberation (PID)(Betsch & Kunz, 2008) and General Decision Making Styles (GDMS) along with personality and demographic data. In common with other studies using some of these instruments big five personality traits are related to decision style, but contrary to other literature no significant relationship between age and decision style is evident. The analysis of gender differences supports the stereotypical view that females record more intuitive decision style than males - contrary to other studies that find no significant gender differences. Also that while males record more rational decision style than females, females are more intuitive to a greater extent than males are more rational. While the literature theorises that senior management is likely to be more intuitive in decision style due to age-related cognitive decline, this theory is not supported by the data in this thesis. There are no significant differences in intuitive decision-making style between the management levels from individual contributor to board member and that in fact senior management is significantly more rational than lower levels of management. Australian and Indian business people decision-making styles are significantly different in all instruments, with the subset of Australian business people being more rational overall, more intuitive overall, and less avoidant, spontaneous and dependent than Indian managers, but Indian managers have higher preference for deliberation and intuition. This thesis adds to the available knowledge relating to management decision-making and decision-making styles. In particular it adds knowledge on managerial level differences to the existing decision styles literature, and extends the cultural differences literature to business peoples’ decision styles.

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