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This article aims to explore the so-called illusion of explanatory depth (IOED) of managers regarding their understanding of digital technologies and examines the effect of knowledge visualization one’s current understanding and decision making. Its purpose is to show that managers think they know more than they do and that this affects decision making but can be reduced through knowledge visualization.

In two experiments with experienced managers, the authors investigate the size and impact of the IOED bias in decision making and examine if sketched self-explanations are as effective as written self-explanations to reduce the bias.

The findings show that experienced managers suffer from a significant illusion concerning their explanatory understanding of digital technologies and that sketching one’s current level of explanatory understanding of these technologies supports the accurate calibration of one’s knowledge. The findings indicate that sketching knowledge is a helpful modality for the detection and subsequent recalibration of biased knowledge in domain-dependent decision making.

This article is the first to explore the effect of sketched knowledge externalization on the calibration of explanatory knowledge of managers. It extends the literature on both, the IOED and on knowledge visualization as an instrument of knowledge calibration.

This paper aims to managerial decision styles, following the General Decision-Making Style Inventory, as potential predictors of individual bias awareness and bias blind spots, with a focus on the rational decision style.

The research is based on a survey of 500 C-1 level managers within Forbes 2000 companies. It explores their decision styles and their assessments of their own and others’ decision behavior.

The results show that the awareness of one’s own susceptibility to biases and bias blind spots is highly dependent on an individual’s (self-declared) decision style and type of cognitive bias; decision-makers with a strong tendency toward a rational or spontaneous decision style see themselves as less vulnerable to cognitive biases but also show a much stronger bias blind spot than those with a tendency toward other decision styles. Meanwhile, decision-makers with a strong tendency toward an intuitive decision style tend to recognize their own vulnerability to cognitive biases and even show a negative blind spot, thus seeing themselves as more affected by cognitive biases than others.

To date, decision styles have not been used as a lens through which to view susceptibility to cognitive biases and bias blind spots in managerial decision-making. As demonstrated in this article, decision styles can serve as predictors of individual awareness and susceptibility to cognitive biases and bias blind spots for managers.