AGILE DECISION-MAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF HYBRID RATIONAL AND NATURALISTIC PROCESSES

Abstract

Organizations operating in volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environments face mounting pressure to abandon slow, hierarchically anchored decision processes in favour of more responsive approaches. Despite extensive scholarly attention to agile methods within software development, the transfer of agile decision making principles to broader organizational and consulting contexts remains theoretically underdeveloped. This study addresses that gap by investigating how agile decision making is enacted in practice across diverse sectors, comparing the explanatory utility of Rational Decision Making (RDM) and Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) frameworks. A qualitative exploratory design was adopted, employing semi structured interviews with 50 purposively selected professionals including senior managers, organizational leaders, project leads, and management consultants drawn from technology, manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, and public sectors. Data were analysed using the six phase thematic analysis procedure of Braun and Clarke (2006). Five overarching themes emerged: contextual intelligence, collaborative decision architecture, information transparency, iterative adaptation, and agile leadership enablement. Findings indicate that neither pure RDM nor pure NDM fully captures contemporary organizational decision practice; instead, participants consistently employed a hybrid approach combining data driven reasoning with experience based intuition within iterative feedback structures. These findings are theoretically integrated into the AGILE DECIDE framework, a novel conceptual model linking leadership commitment, collaborative environments, information transparency, and learning loops to decision efficacy. The study contributes to organizational behavior and management theory by providing a cross sector account of agile decision making beyond its software origins, offering actionable guidance for practitioners and consultants.