Management in times of crisis: Can collective plans prepare teams to make and implement good decisions?

Abstract

PurposeCrises such as the Coronavirus pandemic pose extraordinary challenges to the decision making in management teams. Teams need to integrate available information quickly to make informed decisions on the spot and update their decisions as new information becomes available. Moreover, making good decisions is hard as it requires sacrifices for the common good, and finally, implementing the decisions made is not easy as it requires persistence in the face of strong counterproductive social pressures.Design/methodology/approachWe provide a “psychology of action” perspective on making team-based management decisions in crisis by introducing collective implementation intentions (We-if-then plans) as a theory-based intervention tool to improve decision processes. We discuss our program of research on forming and acting on We-if-then plans in ad hoc teams facing challenging situations.FindingsTeams with We-if-then plans consistently made more informed decisions when information was socially or temporally distributed, when decision makers had to make sacrifices for the common good, and when strong social pressures opposed acting on their decisions. Preliminary experimental evidence indicates that assigning simple We-if-then plans had similar positive effects as providing a leader to steer team processes.Originality/valueOur analysis of self-regulated team decisions helps understand and improve how management teams can make and act on good decisions in crises such as the Coronavirus pandemic.

Strategic Self-Regulation in Groups: Collective Implementation Intentions Help Cooperate When Cooperation Is Called for

“…Although adopting explicit individual or collective goals had no effect on cooperation in our experiment, if-then plans significantly increased rates of goal attainment. This observation is in line with classic individual-level research (Gollwitzer, 1993(Gollwitzer, , 1999(Gollwitzer, , 2014 and recent group-level advances (Thürmer et al, 2015a(Thürmer et al, , 2020b.…”

“…Second, one may argue that the present study used but one type of task and that task type is a crucial (yet often neglected) moderator in group research (Kerr, 2017). Past research has, however, observed cII effects in a wide range of tasks (Thürmer et al, 2020b). Still, a remaining question in this regard is which neural processes are underlying cII effects.…”

“…Collective implementation intention (cII) theory proposes that groups can resort to if-then plans to narrow this gap between cooperative intentions and cooperative actions (Thürmer et al, 2015a(Thürmer et al, , 2017(Thürmer et al, , 2020b. At the individual level, forming implementation intentions (IIs) that specify in advance when, where, and how to act in an if-then format (e.g., "And if I encounter situation y, then I will show the goaldirected response z!…”

How can we master the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic? The role of planning at social levels

“…Teams in leadership positions made important decisions during the Coronavirus pandemic, and a key challenge for such teams was managing the wealth of information as it became available (Thürmer, Wieber, et al, 2020a). Scientists from different disciplines and different global agencies contributed their knowledge and their assessment of the situation (e.g., on whether and when to wear face masks) and team members were exposed to different sets of information.…”

“…Important decisions are often made by teams in leadership positions (Thürmer, Wieber, et al, 2020a). For instance, parliaments debate legislation, board of directors supervise organisations, and governments govern countries.…”