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Feduzi, Alberto, Runde, Jochen, Cabantous, Laure, Faulkner, Philip and Loch, Christoph (2018) 'Updating ""Small World Representations"" in strategic decision-making under extreme uncertainty.' Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, 2018 (1).

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Abstract

The behavioral strategy literature investigates how decision makers might use Small World Representations (SWRs) to guide their actions in situations of extreme uncertainty, but says little about how such representations should be updated during the implementation phase. In this paper, we provide a framework to capture the relationship between SWRs, unknowns and Black Swans, and, drawing on the psychology of reasoning literature, explore different heuristic methods of inquiry that decision makers might use to update their SWRs. We compare the performance of two such methods⎯disconfirmation and counterfactual reasoning⎯in highly uncertain situations characterized by ambiguous and non-definite information. We find that counterfactual reasoning is superior to disconfirmation with respect to (1) counteracting the confirmation bias, (2) promoting the exploration of the scenario space, and (3) favoring the adoption of actions able to mitigate or exploit the consequences of Black Swans.

Item Type: Journal Article
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > School of Finance & Management
ISSN: 00650668
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.5465/AMBPP.2018.141
Date Deposited: 21 Nov 2018 10:55
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/29955

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