Abstract
Managers face risk in explorative decision-making and those who are better at such decisions can achieve future viability. To understand what makes a manager effective at explorative decision-making requires an analysis of the manager’s motivational characteristics. The behavioral activation/inhibition system (BAS/BIS), fitting the motivational orientation of “approach” or “avoidance,” can affect individual decision-making. However, very little is known about the neural correlates of BAS/BIS orientation and their interrelationship with the mental activity during explorative decision-making. We conducted an fMRI study on 111 potential managers to investigate how the brain responses of explorative decision-making interact with BAS/BIS. Participants were separated into high- and low-performance groups based on the median exploration-score. The low-performance group showed significantly higher BAS than that of the high-performance group, and its BAS had significant negative association with neural networks related to reward-seeking during explorative decision-making. Moreover, the BIS of the low-performance group was negatively correlated with the activation of cerebral regions responding to risk-choice during explorative decision-making. Our finding showed that BAS/BIS was associated with the brain activation during explorative decision-making only in the low-performance group. This study contributed to the understanding of the micro-foundations of strategically relevant decision-making and has an implication for management development.
Highlights
Managers face risk in explorative decision-making and those who are better at such decisions can achieve future viability
We investigate how cerebral circuits interact with behavioral activation system (BAS)/behavioral inhibition system (BIS), expecting that low BAS would associate with exploitation, whereas low BIS would show association with explorative decision making, based on previous study that BAS personality tends to explore new information and BIS tend to be satisfied with current rewards and taking exploitation approach
Both exploitation and explorative decision-making were associated with the activation of the middle frontal gyrus (MFG), dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, supplementary motor area (SMA), ventromedial prefrontal cortex, inferior parietal lobule (IPL), superior parietal lobule (SPL), vision-related areas, hippocampus, striatum, middle temporal gyrus (MTG), supramarginal gyrus, anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and sensorimotor areas (Fig. 1 and Table 1)
Summary
Managers face risk in explorative decision-making and those who are better at such decisions can achieve future viability. The BIS of the low-performance group was negatively correlated with the activation of cerebral regions responding to risk-choice during explorative decision-making. Our finding showed that BAS/BIS was associated with the brain activation during explorative decision-making only in the low-performance group. This study contributed to the understanding of the micro-foundations of strategically relevant decision-making and has an implication for management development Organizations need both exploitation and exploration in order to survive and prosper in changing environments[1,2,3]. We investigate why some individuals showed low or high performance at making explorative decision and how the performances are related to their motivational systems. An individual’s motivation orientation of approach or avoidance may influence their exploration and exploitation decision-making and consequential performance. That is, investigating the relationship between BAS or BIS orientation and exploration performance may serve as a good point of reference for strategic talent deployment in organizations
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