Our purpose is to contrast the effects of managerial hubris and modesty on foresight in innovation context. A key premise is that managers (executives) with different self-estimations differ in temporal focus and in manners of processing information acquired from the environment. We develop two insights. First, modest executives can better foresee the future than hubristic executives. Second, institutional forces of innovation can amplify the main effects. We test our hypotheses with two-wave survey data from 530 Chinese innovation firms. Results indicate that modest executives can better foresee the future than hubristic executives. However, hubristic executives have more accurate foresight when institutional forces are high, which however, does not affect modest executives' level of f...[ Read more ]

Our purpose is to contrast the effects of managerial hubris and modesty on foresight in innovation context. A key premise is that managers (executives) with different self-estimations differ in temporal focus and in manners of processing information acquired from the environment. We develop two insights. First, modest executives can better foresee the future than hubristic executives. Second, institutional forces of innovation can amplify the main effects. We test our hypotheses with two-wave survey data from 530 Chinese innovation firms. Results indicate that modest executives can better foresee the future than hubristic executives. However, hubristic executives have more accurate foresight when institutional forces are high, which however, does not affect modest executives' level of foresight. This study has significant implications for the understanding of behavioral strategy in general.

Key Words: Managerial foresight, managerial hubris, managerial modesty, innovation context, institutional forces.