This study assesses the relationship between an owner’s characteristic decisiveness and the performance of his or her business in a sample of small business owners who started new childcare ventures. Decisiveness was found to be positively related to performance. This finding was contrary to expectations of a negative relationship based on prior research related to the effects that the need for cognitive closure have on decision-making processes. One possible explanation for this unexpected result is that often a somewhat intuitive decision-making process is often adequate, particularly for the less complex venture. In such a case, the additional expenditure of time and other resources required to conduct a more normative logic-based decision-making process may result in fewer of these resources being available to the venture once operations have commenced.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/john-leaptrott/9/