Although ambiguity is a pervasive feature of organizations, its influence on organizational decision making is often overlooked. We aim to advance understanding of decision making under ambiguity in organizations by combining insights from organizational research within the Carnegie perspective with psychological research on fundamental human motives. We propose the Carnegie plus Self-Enhancement (CSE) model, integrating the influence of self-enhancement—a fundamental psychological motive—on organizational decision-making under ambiguity. To develop our model, we review existing literature on how self-enhancement influences interpretation of ambiguity in organizational decision making. We then expand on this research by linking self-enhancement to individuals’ social categories (gender and social class), identifying previously unexplored sources of variation in self-enhancement in organizational decision-making. Our analysis elaborates on how belonging to a social category influences decision-makers’ self-enhancement and, consequently, decision-making in ambiguous situations. This approach offers a nuanced decision-making model that considers societal positions, thereby contributing to a more complete understanding of organizational decision-making.

尽管模糊性是组织的普遍特征，但它对组织决策的影响却常常被忽视。我们的目标是通过将卡内基视角下的组织研究的见解与关于人类基本动机的心理学研究相结合，增进对组织中模糊决策的理解。我们提出了卡内基加自我增强（CSE）模型，整合了自我增强这一基本心理动机对模糊条件下组织决策的影响。为了开发我们的模型，我们回顾了有关自我增强如何影响组织决策中模糊性解释的现有文献。然后，我们通过将自我增强与个人的社会类别（性别和社会阶层）联系起来来扩展这项研究，确定组织决策中自我增强变化的先前未探索的来源。我们的分析详细阐述了社会类别的归属如何影响决策者的自我增强，从而影响模糊情况下的决策。这种方法提供了一个考虑社会立场的细致入微的决策模型，从而有助于更全面地理解组织决策。