The effect of uncertainty avoidance on the relationship between intuitive decision-making style and take-the-best heuristic use in employee selection : evidence from Botswana

Abstract

The take-the-best heuristic is one of the decision-making strategies used to optimise organisational decisions made under uncertainty. Previous heuristics research focuses on the flaws emanating from using heuristics for decision-making and places little emphasis on factors influencing the use of heuristics. Currently, there is a renewed interest in unveiling individual factors that lead to the use of specific heuristics. This study drew a sample of 203 employee selection decision-makers, working in Botswana’s services sector, to examine the moderating effect of the decision-maker’s uncertainty avoidance on the relationship between an intuitive decision-making style and the use of take-the-best heuristic in employee selection. The theoretical lens used to understand this relationship was Cognitive Experiential Self Theory. The results of a controlled hierarchical multiple regression with moderation analysis demonstrated that an intuitive decision-making style predicts the use of the take-the-best heuristic in employee selection through a moderating mechanism of uncertainty avoidance. The study’s original theoretical contribution to the literature on heuristics is that the use of the take-the-best heuristic in employee selection is not independently influenced by intuitive decision-making style. Rather, high levels of the decision-makers’ uncertainty avoidance positively moderate the relationship between the intuitive decision-making style and the take-the-best heuristic use. Low and medium levels of uncertainty avoidance have a negative moderation effect on the relationship. Practically, this study suggests that managers can rely on the decision-maker's intuitive decision-making style and uncertainty avoidance orientation when developing interventions aimed at optimising employee selection decisions through the take-the-best heuristic use. The methodological benefit of this study is that even though factors that influence the take-the-best heuristic use were not studied in real life, the employee selection simulation facilitated the collection of qualitative and quantitative data, which were triangulated to enrich the heuristic use decision theory.