infonet-economy

Upper echelons theory describes that executives are influenced by their
personalities and perceptions in strategic decision-making. One
subordinate notion of upper echelons theory is that objectively observable characteristics of executives can be used as a valid approximation of executives' personalities and thereby serve as a predictor for strategic decision-making. However, this notion has been questioned, and there has been demand for more direct measures of strategic decision makers' personalities and the psychological processes underlying strategic decision-making. This paper aims at contributing to the explanation of these psychological processes by defining dimensions to profile top executives' personalities and developing a theory that explains the relationship between this personality profile, anger and decision-making processes of top executives. Our central argument is that top executives' personality is linked to the decision-making process, and that anger mediates this relationship. This contributes to current research by (1) suggesting a comprehensive range of profiling dimensions, (2) investigating the influence of this personality on the emotion anger during the strategic decision-making process, and (3) analyzing if and how this personality directly influences strategic decision-making processes.