The Use and Disclosure of Intuition(s) by Leaders in Australian Organisations: A Grounded Theory

Abstract

As workers, managers, leaders, researchers and theoreticians in organisations and in society - indeed, as humans - I argue that we continue to undervalue and underplay the role of the visceral, the tacit, the silent, the shadow, the emotional and the intuitive. Non-rational influences in the public domain, in particular, the organisations that influence our daily lives, have either been ignored or seen as irrational - something to be avoided, negated, managed, corrected, punished, excluded or in the case of intuition, marginalised, hidden and silenced. Educational institutions prepare students for an organisational life in which instrumental rationality is assumed and expected. However, the assumption that leaders in organisations are exclusively rational in their behaviour and decision-making processes is one that has come under increasing scrutiny. Research has shown that leaders use intuition frequently and consider it important to their role and effectiveness. The same research however, has also revealed that intuitions are often masked in analytical terms or suppressed. A contention of this thesis is that the cost of not acknowledging intuition or accounting for and incorporating it in work discourse and practices is high. Intuition disclosure in organisations has never been the focus of empirical research in Australia nor internationally. Studies of intuition to date have been directed at discovering what intuition 'is', its powers and pitfalls, and how one can best make use of this subconscious and elusive cognitive capacity. Understanding the nature of intuition and its potential is important, however, I assert that this knowledge is impotent in application unless the social processes surrounding its use and disclosure in the 'real world' are also understood. This study employed an approach informed by Grounded Theories to investigate the social processes of intuition use and disclosure at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, organisational and societal levels.