Judgment in Business and Management Research: Shedding New Light on a Familiar Concept

Abstract

Judgment is an important concept in business and management research and related to several subfields, ranging from staff appraisal and entrepreneurship to strategic decision-making and business ethics. The popularity of the concept has given rise to a diversity of understandings, which, in some instances, lack theoretical precision or conceptual clarity. Our review offers a comprehensive overview and consolidates existing research on judgment in business and management research by identifying three perspectives: variance , prediction , and wisdom . We show how these perspectives converge by highlighting shared characteristics of judgment, such as it being evaluative, personal, and key to coping with uncertainty. In addition, our theoretical synthesis demonstrates how the three perspectives diverge along four central characteristics—theoretical inspiration, purpose, onto-epistemological orientation, and mode of reasoning—that shape how judgment is conceptualized and operationalized in business and management research. By developing a theoretical platform that configures judgment research into three distinct perspectives, our review opens up pathways for assessing the conceptual coherence and methodological implications of each perspective. Building on the latter, we explore how the three perspectives can complement each other and conclude by proposing future directions for the advancement of judgment research.