Degrees of Belief: Investigating the Managerial Cognition of Uncertainty

Research in the area of managerial organisation and cognition has brought many insights into managerial processes associated with decision-making. Yet it has not yet investigated the fundamentally cognitive basis of the formal models of decision-making found in economics and decision sciences associated with the expected utility paradigm. This paper uses a managerial and organisational cognition perspective to investigate how managers perceive possible future states as an input to their decision-making regarding those future states. Focusing on optimism bias, we investigate the potential of causal mapping techniques for reducing optimism in the perceptions of risks by presenting empirical results from quasi-experimental work with 10 construction project managers. In discussion, we sketch out the conceptual framework for a cognitive approach to uncertainty, clearly distinguishing it from the behavioural approach associated with the heuristics and biases line of enquiry