The Central Role of Memory in Expert Management Intuition

Managers are required to make decisions in complex environments and are often under tremendous time pressures. The conditions regularly facing managers create and call for specific psychological mechanisms that have been widely investigated in experimental psychology and in neuroscience. In this paper we consider the psychological theories of expertise offered by Dreyfus (Dreyfus, 1972; Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986) and Simon (Chase & Simon, 1973; Simon, 1989); discussing the central tenets of each theory in light of empirical evidence. We then consider Simon’s later work, the template theory of expertise (Gobet & Simon, 1996) and demonstrate how the theory accounts for much of the existing data in a variety of domains, and how its further extension accounts explicitly for the emotional aspects of intuition (Chassy & Gobet, 2011). Through consideration of each contribution to an understanding of expert performance, we expose the central role played by memory in expert intuition. Following examination of the template theory’s accountability for existing chess data, we show how the theory is applicable to intuition in management. We then provide practical advice for management trainers by capitalizing on current knowledge, so that future managers may benefit from effective training, grounded in robust research on the precise mechanisms underlying expertise.