Will behavioral research on managerial decision making generalize to managers?

Abstract

Research on managerial decision making (MDM) is often conducted using business students. By using students as subjects in experiments, researchers assume that the results generalize to managers. To test this assumption, the decision making of managers was compared to that of graduate and undergraduate business students using a complex decision task in which all subjects were equally naive. There were no significant differences between the managers and graduate business students. The undergraduate students, however, made more costly decisions, used less effective decision heuristics, and were more erratic than the managers and graduate students.