Making Smarter Decisions : How Management Philosophies Influence High-Level Strategic Decision Making in Organisations

Abstract

This thesis examines how managerial philosophies condition strategic choices at the executive level under bounded rationality. It argues that executives’ assumptions about human nature, motivation, and control influence decision-making throughout the process by shaping perception, attention, and evaluation. Drawing on McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y as interpretive lenses, the study integrates insights from behavioural decision theory, organisational psychology, and classical management thought.

Through a review of literature on cognition, emotion, and ethics in decision-making, the thesis develops an integrated framework that links managerial assumptions to emotional dynamics, cognitive biases, rationalisation, and post-decision learning. The framework illustrates how strategic outcomes emerge from the interplay of bounded rationality, affective states, and philosophical orientation.

The study contributes conceptually by connecting management philosophy to the psychological foundations of strategy, and by positioning meta-awareness as the reflective mechanism through which leaders can recognise and moderate their cognitive and emotional tendencies. It concludes that managerial philosophy operates as a silent architecture of judgment—one that determines how executives perceive reality, evaluate alternatives, and ultimately shape the trajectory of their organisations.