Good Judgment: The Intersection of Intelligence and Personality

Abstract

Managers and executives must frequently decide how best to allocate scarce financial and human resources. Each decision they make is the end result of a problem-solving exercise. The history of every organization is the cumula-tive sum of the decisions that result from these efforts at problem solving. The quality of individual managerial problem solving and decision mak-ing is a function of good judgment. This chapter is about how to define and evaluate good judgment. Our central argument is that good judgment is a function of intelligence and personality. The statement seems simple, but it is not. The topic of how to define intelligence is quite vexed, and the largest part of this chapter concerns just that problem. Once that is accomplished, we then try to show how good judgment comes from crossing intelligence (as we define it) with personality.