Bounded Awareness and Tacit Knowledge in Managerial Decision-making: Revisiting Challenger 1986

Kumar, Ajith J (2011) Bounded Awareness and Tacit Knowledge in Managerial Decision-making: Revisiting Challenger 1986. TAPMI, Manipal.

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Abstract

In this paper, I bring to fore the relationships between the boundedness of managers’ awareness during decision-making and their tacit knowledge. Owing to bounded awareness, managers sometimes fail to ‘see’ critical information while making decisions, and this can result in costly errors. I invoke details of the Challenger disaster of 1986 to complement my conceptual discussions and essentially offer three distinct propositions: (a) managers’ dependence upon their existing tacit knowledge interacts with the bounds on their awareness in a cycle of positive reinforcement, (b) different decision makers in the organization can experience differing bounds on their awareness towards the same piece of information and (c) the tension between experiences of success and failure influences the development of bounded awareness in individuals. I feel that these propositions can open useful new avenues for future research on the antecedents of, and remedies for, bounds on managerial awareness during decision-making.

Item Type:	TAPMI Working Papers
Uncontrolled Keywords:	bounded awareness, tacit knowledge, self-referential, managerial decision making, path dependence
Subjects:	Human Resource Management
Divisions:	Human Resource Management
Depositing User:	Ms. Vanitha K
Date Deposited:	15 Nov 2018 05:24
Last Modified:	15 Nov 2018 05:24
URI:	http://tapmi.informaticsglobal.com/id/eprint/292

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