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Taking into account that people make countless decisions every day, from those that are seen to be of minor importance and are soon forgotten to those that have major implications, it is possible to note that, besides having a palpable meaning in everyday life, decision-making also has a central role in many academic disciplines. Studies on decision-making present some predominant aspects, such as the search for the development of models for decision-making (Holyoak & Morrison, 2005; Szpiro, 2020); research on information processing as a mechanism for reducing uncertainty (Dubey et al., 2021; Fan et al., 2017; Oliveira & Handfield, 2019); and the mapping of cognitive, behavioral and psychological aspects that influence and explain decision making (Hodgkinson & Sadler-Smith, 2018; Lee et al., 2018; Thompson & Markovits, 2021).
Considering that “Poker is a social game of constant and rapid decision-making” (Laakasuo et al., 2015, p. 934), it becomes an excellent context for the study of many disciplines, including managers’ decision-making (Palomäki et al., 2020). It is understood here that decision-making in the Poker game can resemble a manager's decision-making since they are time pressure (Crescenzi et al., 2021; Letmathe & Noll, 2021), have a highly competitive environment (Jagatheesaperumal et al., 2021), dynamic changes in the environment (Alves et al., 2021), high risk, uncertainty (Davenport, 2020; Szpiro, 2020), and incomplete information (Malewska, 2018; Miller & Sardais, 2013; Palomäki et al., 2020). A recent publication in The Wall Street Journal points out what good poker players and good traders have a lot in common, and traders can learn many business lessons from Poker players (Ravo, 2019). Likewise, business management in the face of COVID-19 (Monllos, 2020), the decisions of Russia and Saudi Arabia regarding the supply of oil (Uren, 2020), and a “poker face” during negotiations (Raaphorst & Loyens, 2020) were also compared with the dynamics of the Poker game.
Despite some academic and nonacademic articles used poker game analogy within an organizational context (Bankras, 2020; Raaphorst & Loyens, 2020; Ravo, 2019; Uren, 2020), most of them were concerned with the negotiation or investment domain. Studies on how the deliberate practice of professional poker players to learn from past experiences and improve their skills to adapt and survive in their uncertain environment can lead to organizational survivability improvement are still underdeveloped. Given the speed of change in the environment in which organizations are inserted, the ability to learn from past experiences and improve their adaptability to these changes is more than essential (Pettit et al., 2019). More than adapting, the speed and quality of this adaptation are what make corporations achieve competitive advantages (Annarelli & Nonino, 2016; Wieland & Wallenburg, 2013). Additionally, there is a gap in the understanding of how today's companies, in the emerging context of Big Data, can create value by using simultaneously both the analytical (Oliveira et al., 2022; Oliveira & Barcelos, 2020; Sukma et al., 2021), and the intuitive approach (Malewska, 2018; Prietula & Simon, 1989; Raoelison et al., 2020, 2021; Simon, 1987).