Prospect Theory and Strategic Decision-Making

Prospect theory is one of the most influential theories of decision-making under risk. The theory draws on psychology and has been proposed as an alternative to expected utility theory. It substitutes a value function for the utility function, and a decision weights function for probabilities. Its main ideas are that changes in wealth are more important than absolute levels of wealth for describing risk-taking, and that decision weights is a non-linear function of probability. We describe the theory’s main assumptions and its effects on strategy research and suggest a possible direction for its use in future research.