Feeling When The Clock Is Ticking: Emotions And Decisions Making For Strategic Change Under Time Pressure

This paper investigates the mutual influences of managers' emotions and time pressure during the decision-making process for strategic change. In an experimental setting, 253 managers generated ideas for a strategic change task and subsequently made a strategic choice. Our findings demonstrate that negative rather than positive emotions influence strategic decision making and that their influences vary across decision-making phases. Furthermore, the direction of the emotional effects changes in the context of time pressure. This study contributes to strategy practice and strategy process research by integrating emotions as embodied practices during the strategic decision-making process, thereby enriching the affective microfoundations of strategizing. Our study demonstrates that it is fruitful to study embodied and contextual practices together to better understand how strategic decision quality is achieved.