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Author
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Stephan Billinger1 | Kannan Srikanth2 | Nils Stieglitz3 |
Terry R. Schumacher
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Year
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2020
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Publisher
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Strategic Management Journal, 42(2), 361-385.
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Abstract
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Exploration and exploitation in strategic decision-making entail decisions about whether and where to search for new alternatives to improve the status quo. Prior research has not explored how decisions about whether to continue search (vs. stop search or satisfice) and where to search (near vs. far) are interrelated. We report laboratory experiment results on how individuals decide whether and where to search in a complex, combinatorial task. We find that different feedback variables influence the decision to stop search from decisions regarding how broadly to search. Our results suggest that not accounting for the decision to continue (or stop) searching, separately from breadth of search, can lead to incorrect predictions regarding how feedback influences search behavior.