Int. Journal of Business Science and Applied Management / Business-and-Management.org
1 INTRODUCTION
The cognitive perspective in the management literature recognises managerial perception as the firm’s
“black box” that hides the key parameters determining decision-making from view (Sáez and Jiménez, 2004;
Yanes, 2004). Managers form a mental representation from the stimuli they receive from their competitive
context (external stimuli), and this becomes the foundation on which they adopt their strategic decisions.
Research also shows that managers differ individually in terms of how they perceive, acquire, interpret and use
information (see Walsh, 1995, Livengood and Reger, 2010, Tang et al, 2012, Barreto, 2012). Thus it would be
extremely useful to understand the factors that affect managers’ interpretations of stimuli (Kuvas and Kaufman,
2004), because these interpretations affect their knowledge about internal and contextual factors, and
consequently condition entrepreneurial actions and intentions (Wood, 1991; Miller, 1993; Thomas and Simerly,
1994; Shane, 2003; Baron, 2006; Ubcbasaran et al., 2008; Kaplan, 2008; Blume and Covin, 2011; Plambeck,
2011).
In this respect, research has stressed that managers’ perception is far from being an objective and rational
process. Rather, the process is influenced by aspects as diverse as the context (Santos and García, 2008), the
qualities of the manager, and even the nature of the stimulus (Dutton and Ashford, 1993, Gielnik, et al., 2011;
Plambeck, 2011). The empirical literature offers clear evidence that the organisational context – the type of firm
and its strategic orientation – influences managers’ interpretations of the stimuli coming from the environment
(Thomas and McDaniel, 1990; Ginsberg and Venkatraman, 1992; Thomas et al., 1993, 1994; Calori et al., 1994;
Sutcliffe, 1994; Denison et al., 1996; Chattopadhay et al., 1999; Nadkarni and Barr, 2008; Nicolau and Shane,
2009; Singh, 2010). At the same time, both theoretical and empirical literature recognises that managers’
personal characteristics and beliefs also condition the perception process (Daft and Weick, 1984; Schwenk,
1984; Milliken and Lant, 1991; Kautonen, 2008; Blume and Covin, 2011). The difficulty arises when it comes
to how to operationalise and analyse these individual characteristics that affect perception. Perhaps for this
reason researchers frequently use demographic characteristics (age, education, experience, etc.) to measure
individual characteristics (Schneider and DeMeyer, 1991; Thomas et al., 1993, 1994; Kautonen, 2008). But the
researchers often explain the effect of these demographic variables using arguments involving cognitive aspects
and the different managerial attitudes that affect the process of recognition and interpretation of the competitive
context (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Gillingwater and Gillingwater, 2009). It would be more appropriate to
recognise that the individual characteristics that most affect the perception process are the cognitive traits.
The cognitive profile refers to the set of individual qualities related to the different forms of thought and
action managers can engage in, in other words their capacity to recognise and interpret information. After a
review of the available literature, we did not find any studies that have analysed the relationship between
managerial perception and cognitive traits.
As proposed in signal detection theory (Swets, 1992), a stimulus is a signal that could foster an idea or
knowledge in the receiver. In management literature it is common to introduce external stimuli as signals that
issue the context but that influence managers’ reactions in such a way that they condition business behaviour
(Miller, 1996; Green et al., 2008). Furthermore, entrepreneurship research emphasizes the key role of stimuli in
opportunity recognition processes (Shane, 2003, Baron, 2006; McMullen and Shepherd, 2006, Ucbasaran, et al.,
2008; Nicolay and Shane, 2009). Additionally, the research stresses the diversity and complexity of the stimuli
that managers receive (Mintzberg et al., 1976; Eggers and Kaplan, 2008; Phan et al 2009, Tang, et al., 2012) and
the varying amount of attention managers pay them. Research has shown that managers pay more attention to
stimuli linked to threats than to those linked to opportunities and linked with previous knowledge (Dutton and
Ashford, 1993, Shepherd and Detienne, 2005; Blume and Covin, 2011). Researchers have also shown that the
strength and clarity of the stimulus moderates the extent to which the receiver’s personality affects the
perception process. Thus the clearer the stimulus is, the less important the individual perception process (Fiske
and Taylor, 1991; Waller et al., 1995; Entrialgo et al., 2001). Other researchers offer features to classify the
stimuli into different categories. Some distinguish between opportunities and threats, while others stress
structure and strength (Haukedal, 1994; Haukedal and Gronhaug, 1994).
Thus the objective of the current paper is to study the effect of the manager’s cognitive traits on the process
of the perception of stimuli. The study also analyses whether the effect of the cognitive profile on perception
depending on the nature of the stimuli. The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the perception of diverse
stimuli. For this purpose, the following section looks at the literature on the perception process and the influence
of the cognitive profile. The stimuli are characterised according to two features (Haukedal, 1994; Haukedal and
Gronhaug, 1994): structure and strength. This leads to the formulation of the model that guides the study.
Section 3 offers the methodology. This work uses experimentation, a technique that is frequently used in
research on cognitive biases and managerial perception (Samuelson and Zeckhauser, 1988; Sterman, 1989;
Schwenk, 1995; Shout and Bolger 2002, Gielnik et al., 2011). The experiment involves business administration
students, who were considered representative of potential managers. These students were chosen for two main
reasons: they had a basic understanding of the workings of the capital market and takeover processes, and they