Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Date of Award

5-2003

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Management

First Advisor

Dr. Jane LeMaster

Second Advisor

Dr. Vern Vincent

Third Advisor

Dr. Chad Richardson

Abstract

Decision-making has been a subject of interest for management scholars since the scientific management era (Wren, 1994). Brockmann and Simmonds (1997) and Guinipero, Dawley and Anthony (1999) studied the link between managerial decision-making and tacit knowledge in the effort to identify important cognitive elements in the day-to-day decision-making processes of firm managers. Despite their bold and innovative aims, however, Brockmann et al. (1997) and Guinipero et al. (1999) were weakened by their fundamental assumption that tacit knowledge is synonymous to intuition, and by inconsistencies in their research goals and methods. This dissertation addresses these shortcomings.

The contributions of this research to the realm of management studies are as follows; first, it extends the studies by Brockmann et al. (1997) and Guinipero et al. (1999) to an international setting by surveying managers in Mexico's maquiladora industry to explore the link between intuition and tacit managerial know-how. The second valuable contribution of this study is that it tests the link between managerial know-how and intuition and the number of promotions, gender and the geographical proximity of maquiladora managers to the border; these variables have been theoretically linked in the literature but have yet to be tested empirically.

Third, this study adds Mexico to the growing roll of test countries for two long-standing and oft-utilized surveys by Wagner and Sternberg (1991) and Parikh et al. (1994) used for assessing tacit knowledge and intuition. These survey instruments have been applied in fifteen countries in five continents, yet have never been tested in the largest Spanish speaking culture in the world. It stands to reason that by testing Mexican nationals, the universality of these surveys could be greatly enhanced.

Comments

Copyright 2003 Jose Castillo. All Rights Reserved.

https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/exploring-managerial-intuition-knowledge-managers/docview/305221674/se-2?accountid=7119

Granting Institution

University of Texas-Pan American

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