aalto1 untyped-item.component.html
Mitigating confirmation bias in the sensemaking stage of strategic business decision making with the help of design thinking
Loading...
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
School of Business |
Master's thesis
Electronic archive copy is available via Aalto Thesis Database.
Authors
Date
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
151
Series
Abstract
Integrating design thinking with other organizational approaches and tracing how design thinking impacts organizational or team sensemaking is a prominent study topic. Assessment of the impact of design thinking as a novel problem solving methodology in organizational context, as well as understanding behavioral changes that it can initiate within organizations, could strenghten its utility as a method for improving organizational outcomes related to innovation. This thesis links together research on design-thinking, cognitive biases and the challenges of strategic decision making. Empirically, the current thesis investigates the effects of design thinking practices on confirmation bias in the collaborative sensemaking stage within a small business team.
Seven participants were asked to find a solution to a company-provided strategic business challenge during a design-thinking workshop. The participants first needed to create their own solution as a written response, then to provide a paper mockup or sketch and discuss it with other participants, evaluate solutions proposed by others immediately after the workshop as a written response, and finally rate different proposed solutions in a post-questionnaire a month later. The answers were segmented into individual propositions, and these segments were categorized based on thematic similarity in a bottom-up coding process. Differences between segments in pre-responses, oral responses, and post-responses in each category were compared qualitatively. The participants’ responses were content analyzed also against factors that have been found to mitigate or strengthen motivation to reduce confirmation bias in previous research. From the follow-up questionnaire importance ratings of potential foci, the average rating that participants gave each idea was calculated, and self-originated statements were compared to other originated statements using the Mann Whitney U test.
The study showed that there is a potential for confirmation bias to emerge in business decision-making, and that shortly introduced design-thinking tools and methodologies did not have a clear positive influence on collaborative sensemaking stage linked to business decision-making process. One of the theoretical implications of this research that could be utilized further in other experiments design is the theoretical framework on confirmation bias manifestation in strategic business decision making. The current thesis also reviews studies conducted so far in the field of biases mitigation with the help of design-thinking methods, identifying gaps for future research to address.