Paper info

Business decision making: understanding the dynamic role of emotions

Nikolina Koporcic and Miika Nietola

The paper was published at the 34th IMP-conference in Sri Lanka in 2018.

In recent years, there has been a need for a deeper understanding of the cumulating knowledge in different science disciplines about emotions in decision making. While many traditional economic theories operate with the preconception of utility maximization, this contradicts with the recent findings in behavioral economics and neurosciences. In the meanwhile, the IMP research tradition, although managerially oriented, have just started to acknowledge the importance of individuals for interactive business environments. Besides being described as actors acting on behalf of their companies, their roles and capabilities have often been omitted. Instead, IMP researchers have focused on studying strategizing in business networks and interactive processes between organizations embedded in those networks. This conceptual article aims to contribute to the conceptual development of the field while providing an answer on how we can make the IMP research more managerially relevant. By cross-fertilization of ideas from different disciplines, our goal is to advance the IMP literature by investigating the role of emotions in business decision making. As the outcome, we present step-to-step instructions on practical means how individuals can cope with emotions in dynamic decision making processes.