Theresa Treffers, Patricia Klarner, Quy Nguyen Huy
Managers often have limited available time to make high-quality strategic decisions that are both original and feasible. This joint objective is important but difficult to achieve because under time constraints, managers must combine different cognitive processes that are often influenced by emotional states. However, research investigating how time constraints and emotions interact and impact the quality of strategic decisions is scarce. Building upon the affect infusion model and information processing perspective, our experimental study involving 174 managers shows that the impact of time constraints and emotions varies across the two decision-making tasks of strategic idea generation and strategic choice. In particular, compared to the managers in a neutral emotional state under low time constraints, the happy managers under high time constraints seemed to generate fewer original and fewer feasible strategic ideas and appeared to make worse original strategic choices, while compared to the managers in a neutral emotional state under low time constraints, the sad managers under high time constraints made better original strategic choices. Our study contributes novel insight into behavioral strategy research by showing how time constraints and emotions causally and jointly influence different quality dimensions in various tasks involving strategic decision-making. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd
Technical University Munich, TUM School of Management, Arcisstr. 21, München, 80333, Germany; Seeburg Castle University, Seeburgstr. 8, Seekirchen am Wallersee, 5201, Austria; Institute for Organization Design, Department of Strategy & Innovation, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Welthandelsplatz 1, Wien, 1020, Austria; INSEAD, Strategy Department, 1 Ayer Rajah Avenue, 138676, Singapore
