Rationality and dual process models of reasoning in managerial cognition and decision making

•Overview of the on-going rationality debate in management research.•Clarifying what is actually meant by bounded rationality and what is not.•Linking ecological rationality with the field of management research.•Integration of various rationality concepts into a dual process framework.

This paper sketches important concepts of rationality for managerial cognition. It concentrates on bounded rationality and provides descriptions of the heuristics and bias program and of the fast and frugal heuristics program by Gigerenzer and colleagues. One objective is to link the underlying concept of ecological rationality in judgment and decision making with the field of management research. This area has been mostly dominated with ideas of the heuristics and biases program coined by Kahneman and Tversky with an emphasis of irrationality and lapses of people’s judgments and decisions. After an overview of the historic development in this debate on rationality, this paper concludes with the description of dual process models as a potentially unifying approach of both programs and their promising research potential for management research.