Management under uncertainty – the unavoidable risk-taking

Accentuating the concept of management under uncertainty in the Uppsala internationalization process model, the purpose of this paper is to develop a model for describing how managers act while keeping uncertainty at an acceptable level.

The authors perform two empirical studies to underpin the model they construct. First, a survey of 309 chief executive officers and chief financial officers in large, publicly listed international firms in the Nordic region on managerial risk perceptions and, second, a case study of Volvo Car Corporation and its endeavors when developing new car models for the Chinese market on a new platform – a process characterized by unprecedented uncertainty.

The proposed model describing managers’ behavior under uncertainty contains elements such as adjusting/proceeding in small steps, reducing uncertainty via learning, building relationships with important parties in the environment to avoid unforeseen changes and re-dos (i.e. starting all over again) and, perhaps most important, acting despite uncertainty.

The paper highlights a central, though forgotten, concept of the Uppsala internationalization process model, i.e. management under uncertainty, and, thereby, opens a new path for research on how manager behave under the sway of uncertainty.