“The environments in which we live and work are becoming increasingly complex. The technological innovations, globalization, and political upheavals hugely impact our decision making capabilities. Myriad interactions between available but limited physical and intellectual resources and the objectives and goals we, as a society in 21st century, want to realize severely impinge on the decision makers, be it in public or private domain.” (Qudrat-Ullah, Spector & Davidsen, 2008)
Research on decision making does not focus anymore on simple cost–benefit analysis. The homo economicus was always an illusion. Decision making processes are way more complex and involve hard to explain things like gut feeling. So let’s face it: “decision making involves not only the cold-hearted calculation of expected utility based upon explicit knowledge of outcomes but also more subtle and sometimes covert processes that depend critically upon emotion” (Naqvi, Shiv & Bechara, 2006).
But there is one big problem: decisions have to be justified in front of others and when it comes to emotions this is hard. “It just felt right” is normally not a convincing answer. And also for oneself: gut decisions are not easy to understand after 2 years. The following digital tool tries to guide through the decision process while taking into account internal and external factors. It forces to uncover internal motives (of the company or the person). We believe that those motives lead to gut decisions as they are like implicit programs running through your system and influencing your decisions. Those motives are part of the organizational identity: “in the absence of an externalized bureaucratic structure, it becomes more important to have an internalized cognitive structure of what the organization stands for and where it intends to go—in short, a clear sense of the organization's identity. A sense of identity serves as a rudder for navigating difficult waters” (Albert, Ashforth, & Dutton, 2000.)
