Planning and Decision Making: Beware of Emotions and Illusions

Decision making no longer assumes a rational information processor, be it in business management or entrepreneurship. Emotions and conations interact with cognition. This is the received view. But what exactly are emotion and will? True to its title, this article begins by providing a firm grounding on emotions. Next, it considers conscious will: Is it a force or a feeling or is it an illusion? Moving on, this article briefly examines the complex concept of consciousness and its role in decision making from the Euro-American and the East Indian perspectives. Is there a little man, a homunculus, who makes decisions? It then considers an existing theory of planning as a cognitive process. The context for discussion is provided by a case history of an entrepreneur. It examines and highlights the infusion of emotional determinants at each step of the decision-making process. The final section of this article describes tests of executive functions that are biased towards analytic or synthetic aspects of planning.