Interpretive essay topic
Write a paper on your own experience with intuition in the workplace or college so far. As a worker, or as a
student, how aware are you of the intuitive cognition at play in your decision-making? Describe one
instance in which your own intuition was at work, and reflect on what this intuitive moment may have been
anchored in: assumptions, affects, cultural bias, or any other factor? You may not have perceived this
instance as involving intuition before taking this course, so you may have to go down memory lane and
reflect on the cognitive processes that led you to decisions in the past.
Your paper should make references to one or more of the readings for class. You may also wish to have a
look at a dissertation titled Intuition and its Role in Strategic Thinking, submitted to the Norwegian School
of Management. Here is the abstract:
“Even though intuition is recognized as imperative in strategic thinking management literature is
surprisingly silent on the issue. This inquiry thus provides an historical and hermeneutic review of
philosophical, psychological and management theory on intuition. It reveals that philosophers conceive
intuition as rational while psychologists tend not to. Philosophers do so primarily because intuition is
anchored in Ideas, Forms and Archetypes, which are perceived as a priori laws governing and
conditioning all existence. The argument is that intuition is the ontological foundation for any normative
theory of rationality. Implications for the rationality debate are discussed.
Three levels of intuition are discerned and contrasted with analytical thinking. The first and
second levels correspond to intuitions from the personal and collective unconscious experience
respectively. They can be either introverted or extraverted. The third level corresponds to what some
philosophers call the non-dual, integral state of mind.
An empirical study including personal interviews with 105 Norwegian top managers indicate that
in strategic thinking more emphasis is put on intuition than analysis, especially in exploration of new
terrain and technology. They define intuition primarily in accordance with level one. In describing its key
features they focus on foresight, new ideas and synthesis. Finally Myers Briggs Type Indicator® was
applied, revealing that they have a strong personality preference for intuition.”
And here are the first two paragraphs of the Introduction:
“Why is it that philosophers define intuition as rational and superior to analytical thinking while
psychologists tend not to? Anyone acquainted with the heuristics and biases literature has noted that
intuition is conceived as a largely unconscious, biased, automatic and effortless cognitive process.1 Those
familiar with philosophy know that here intuition is considered supreme intelligence and according to Plato
the apprehension of it, is rather to be thought of as a revelation which can only follow upon a long
intellectual training.2 Indeed this is an intriguing issue. It is so to speak a Copernican reversal in our history
of epistemology. The objective of this inquiry is to painstakingly track the evolution of this elusive concept
from its origins to modern day folklore and in this way address the question: what is intuition?
More specifically I start by carving out the rationale applied by the philosophers revealing that they provide
a substantial body of theory on intuition. Being equipped with their coherent view on intuition, it is
confusing to find a differing and fragmented view in psychology. Osbeck notes: “it suffers from vague and
multiple uses of the term, association with diverse experimental phenomena, and from minimal effort to
integrate these in a consistent way.”3 No wonder management theory is silent on the issue. The problem
however is that top managers recognize intuition as pivotal in strategic thinking and decision making. An
exploratory study aiming at conceptual clarification may thus usefully inform the field of strategy. The
theoretical inquiry is thus to serve also as a separate contribution.”
If you are interested, or wish to check out the bibliographic references, you may access this dissertation at
http://web.bi.no/forskning/papers.nsf/0/2682ad7f82929fdfc1256ecc002d3841/$FILE/2004-04-henden.pdf