The importance of risk to decision making is attested by its position in decision
theory (Allais 1953; Arrow 1965), by its standing in managerial ideology (Peters and
Waterman 1982), and by the burgeoning interest in risk assessment and managment
(Crouch and Wilson 1982). However, empirical investigations of decision making in
organizations have not generally focused directly on the conceptions of risk and risk
taking held by managers (March 198 la); and empirical investigations of risk in decision
making have not generally focused on managerial behavior (Vlek and Stallen 1980;
Schoemaker 1980, 1982; Slovic, Fischhoff and Lichtenstein 1982). As a result, the
relation between decision theoretic conceptions of risk and conceptions of risk held by
managers remains relatively murky