Understanding Decision Biases Based on Cognitive Science Approach (Case Study: Management Consulting Industry)

In the classical era, the decision-making process was considered to be completely identifiable, but in the modern era, this assumption was increasingly challenged because decision-making is very complex and in various ways, intuitive, experimental, heuristic, static and dynamic rationality. It takes place in different situations and naturally the human brain may make mistakes in this process. Today, the concept of rational decision-making has been seriously criticized; Criticisms such as that the reasoning capacity of each person is limited and low and influenced by cognitive biases and hidden biases the aim of this study was to understand the decision-making orientations of organizational consultants based on the cognitive science approach.

The present study was applied in terms of purpose and qualitative in nature and method. The statistical population of the study was the organizational consultants of an industrial town located in Tehran province in 2020. The sample size of 10 people was selected due to theoretical saturation and through snowball sampling. Structured interview method was used to collect data and reliability method between two coders (Cohen kappa coefficient) was used to determine the reliability, which was obtained as 0.86 and was confirmed. The validity was also based on the interview protocol. Data analysis was performed using open coding equivalent to qualitative content analysis in Maxqda 11 software.

Findings from interviews with consultants included: 3 main categories, 8 sub-categories, 28 concepts and 161 initial codes (3 main categories; excessive information, need to act quickly and lack of meaning) and (8 subcategories: availability, framing, reference effect, validation, representation, insistence, commitment and control illusion).

The results showed that there are strategic prescriptions for all three main categories, which can be used to greatly reduce bias. Holding workshops such as critical thinking due to deconstruction in the mental framework of individuals, recognizing their personality type and others, clarifying goals before seeing and reviewing options, carefully estimating information sources and increasing the time for decision making reduce this incidence It becomes biased.