Research

ITD sits at the intersection of research and practice. For more than two decades we have studied what helps people, teams and organizations make better decisions, and tested those ideas in the real world.

One of the questions that has shaped the work from the beginning is why capable, experienced people sometimes make poor decisions, particularly when pressure and emotion are high.

That question led to doctoral research on personality, emotion and managerial decision-making competence, and to peer-reviewed work examining how personality affects the relationship between boredom and managers' decision-making. It also produced an early strand of applied work on integrating affective decision-making competence into leadership development, presented at the International Personnel Assessment Council conference in 2015, which became part of the foundation for the Leadership Competence Indicator.

Since then, the questions have broadened alongside our work with leaders, teams, entrepreneurs and organizations. Areas of particular interest include:

• decision-making competence and cognitive bias
• emotion and judgment under uncertainty
• leadership and team effectiveness
• risk appraisal and confidence calibration
• how Decision Intelligence can be developed
• decision-making in entrepreneurship and organizational growth
• how AI changes human judgment, leadership, and accountability

Much of our current research takes place through SENSE and university partnerships, including work with undergraduate and MBA students. We are studying whether Decision Intelligence can be learned, how it transfers into real decisions, and how people use AI without giving up the judgment and agency that should remain human. Classroom research has generated comparative data on student decision quality and engagement, with further studies underway.

The work is also shared and tested in the wider academic, professional and business communities. Recent presentations have addressed Decision Intelligence and complexity, resilience, risk appraisal under pressure, and the changing relationship between AI and human leadership.

We continue to collaborate with universities, researchers and organizations on new studies. The questions keep expanding, but the purpose has remained remarkably consistent: understand what helps people make better judgments and decisions, and turn what we learn into something useful in practice.

Selected Publications & Research Presentations

Du Preez, M.M., Kriek, H.S., & Albright, J. (2020). Openness as Moderator between Feeling Bored and Managers' Decision-making Competence: A Study of Managers in the Retail Industry. In C.E.J. Härtel, W.J. Zerbe & N.M. Ashkanasy (Eds.), Emotions and Service in the Digital Age (Research on Emotion in Organizations, Vol. 16, pp. 193–216). Bingley: Emerald Publishing Limited.

Carr, A., Bachmann, A., du Preez, M.M., et al. (2025). Employee Resilience in Selection, Training & Organizational Development Programs. Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology Annual Conference, Denver. The ITD contribution explored the relationship between personality, resilience capacity and applied Decision Intelligence.

Du Preez, M.M., Kriek, H.S., & Albright, J. (2018). Personality as Moderator in the Relationship Between Feeling Bored and Decision-making Competence. EMONET XI, Chicago.