Project managers and decision making: Conditional cognitive switching and rationally stepping up

Abstract

Decision makers switch between analytical-rational and intuitive-experiential approaches to decision making, a phenomenon termed “cognitive gear switching.” Such switching is crucial for decision making in any organization. However, how decision makers switch between the intuitive-experiential and analytical-rational approaches, the interplay between these approaches and contextual factors remains poorly understood. We study this in the context of decisions made in ongoing product-development projects, where we distinguish between the decision-making behavior of project managers and other project members. We show that project managers are more likely to switch decision-making approaches when faced with project uncertainty and, in such cases, to favor the analytical-rational approach. As such, we define project managers as “conditional cognitive switchers” and the strategy used as “rationally stepping up.”