Management: Faculty Publications

Looking Before Leaping: the Effect of Owner Decisiveness on Small Business Performance

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2008

Publication Title

Academy of Entrepreneurship Journal

ISSN

1528-2686

Abstract

This study assesses the relationship between an owner’s characteristic decisiveness and the performance of his or her business in a sample of small business owners who started new childcare ventures. Decisiveness was found to be positively related to performance. This finding was contrary to expectations of a negative relationship based on prior research related to the effects that the need for cognitive closure have on decision-making processes. One possible explanation for this unexpected result is that often a somewhat intuitive decision-making process is often adequate, particularly for the less complex venture. In such a case, the additional expenditure of time and other resources required to conduct a more normative logic-based decision-making process may result in fewer of these resources being available to the venture once operations have commenced.

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