Intuition in Organizations: New Research Directions

Foresight, or the ability of employees to assess their current situation, draw on existing knowledge and expertise, and make decisions to impact future outcomes of their work and/or organization, is an important contributor to strategic planning in firms (Slaughter, 1995). Cognitions, including intuition, contribute significantly to decision-making (Hodgkinson & Sadler-Smith, 2018) and strategic foresight (Horton, 1999; Voros, 2003), yet research investigating these individual-level abilities in organizations is scant. This contribution presents outcomes of an empirical study exploring Individual Foresight (IF) and extends the application of intuition research to a new organizational context. Investigating How do employees experience IF in their organization? twenty-seven Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis interviews were conducted with employees across two industries to establish the essence of individual experience with foresight. Ten superordinate themes formed a framework of IF comprising four key elements.