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This article aims to trace the historical development of the behavioral strategy (BS) field, which implements psychology in strategic management. Mainly, it provides a contextual understanding of how this stream of research has historically evolved and what relevant future trajectories are. This work is part of the “over half a century of Management Decision” celebrative and informal Journal section.

We consider BS literature produced in management decision (MD), the oldest and longest-running scholarly publication in management, as a proxy for the evolution of management thought. Through a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) process, we collected – via the MD website and Scopus – a sample of 97 BS articles published in MD from its foundation (1967) until today (2024). Regarding the analysis, we adopted a Reflexive Thematic Analysis approach to synthesize the main BS topics, then read from a historical perspective regarding three “eras” over which the literature developed. Selected international literature outside the Journal’s boundaries was considered to complement this historical analysis.

Historically, within the BS field, the interest passed from the rules to rationally govern strategic decision-making processes, to studying what causes cognitive errors, to understanding how to avoid biases and to being prepared for dramatic changes. The article also identifies six future research trajectories, namely “positive heuristics,” “context-embedded mental processes,” “non-conventional thinking,” “cognitive evolutionary triggers,” “debiasing strategies” and “behavioral theories for new strategic challenges” that future research could investigate.

The limitation of the study lies in its exclusive focus on MD for investigating the historical evolution of BS, thereby overlooking critical contributions from other journals. Therefore, MD’s editorial preferences have influenced results. A comprehensive SLR on the BS field is still needed, requiring broader journal coverage to mitigate selection biases and enhance field appraisal.

This contribution is the first to offer a historical evolutionary view of the BS field, complementing the few other reviews on this stream of research. This fills a gap in the study of the evolution of management thought.

While the three lines model (TLM) provides an organizational structure to execute risk and control duties, research and practice show limitations in the model's implementation. These limitations result in governance issues. Such issues, together with control weaknesses, could be addressed by leveraging properties of distribution, transparency, and immutability of blockchain technology. To this end, in this paper the authors propose a conceptual control framework based on blockchain technology to augment control practice.

The design of the resulting blockchain-based control framework (BBCF) and its prototype, based on the design science research methodology (DSRM), is presented and discussed in terms of the potential impact in the context of the identified problems within the TLM.

One potential outcome of BBCF could be to redefine the scope and boundaries of some of the activities in audit and control practices from a more static to a more dynamic and prospective role. In a larger context of improving governance practices, the BBCF could set the path for a more inclusive and participatory interaction between the different governance actors of an organization.

However, this assumes that blockchain is more widely adopted despite its complexity and rigidity.

BBCF covering both a conceptual model design and a reference implementation provides an innovation in audit and control. BBCF could include all relevant stakeholders who have an interest in corporate governance and control activities, including the regulators.

The contribution intends to serve both as a starting point for discussing the evolution of audit and control practice based on blockchain technology, as well as an initial actionable prototype for experimentation and further development.