On the strategic value of equifinal choice

Abstract

Managers are often faced with the need to choose among multiple satisficing options. We call this situation equifinal choice and argue how it opens an opportunity for managers to choose a new trajectory for their firm—an opportunity for strategic action. Although equifinal choice can exist in any environment, it becomes most consequential when uncertainty is high. Uncertainty weakens the adherence of organizational members to a superordinate goal and the plurality of goals leads political processes to guide the firm’s strategy. Extant view has identified random choice as an unbiased, fair, simple, and swift solution to the problem of equifinal choice. Random choice is also commonly used in machine learning and artificial intelligence systems. As organizations augment their decision making with these systems, there is a threat that they forego these strategic opportunities and randomly choose actions that fail to harness commitment and trust. In this Point of View article, we highlight the problem of equifinal choice, explain different ways it can be approached, and motivate why strategic choice can be valuable for organizations over and above defaulting to random choice.

Microfoundations of Problem Solving: Attentional Engagement Predicts Problem-Solving Strategies

“…Further work is needed to determine how managers change their problem-solving strategies in response to shifts in attention. Equifinality is a key element in crafting solutions to problems; as a solution is found, multiple directions open up and, at least in the short term, all seem equally viable (Arrieta and Shrestha 2022). Our findings about how problems are solved can serve as a basis for research on organization microstructures (Puranam 2018) or as a point of departure, using the methods from Study 1, to investigate whether and how attention is allocated differently when a problem is solved by groups of individuals working together.…”