Phronesis, Intuition, and Deliberation in Managerial Decision-Making: Results of a Global Survey

There are several well-established concepts that explain decision-making. The sociology of wise practice suggests that thinking preferences like the use of intuition form a cornerstone of administrators’ virtuous practice and phronesis is a likely candidate to explain this behaviour. This study uses conceptual and theoretical resources from behavioural sciences, management science, as well as philosophy to account for individual level differences in employees’ thinking preferences in administrative professions. The analysis empirically investigates the behavioural dimension of the preference for intuition versus the preference for deliberation by examining three different intuitive markers present among individuals who nonetheless prefer to use deliberation. We explore possible explanations for the differences and similarities within our global sample of 2227 workplace respondents who conceptually represent phronetic practitioners. The results show that many phronetic practitioners prefer the intuitive marker of unconscious thought in addition to deliberation.