Nurses, Managers, and Engineers – Oh My! Disciplinary Perceptions of Intuition and Its Role in Expertise Development

This Research Category - Full Paper presents initial emergent themes from our quest to understand the construct of intuition. Our work uses theories of expertise development and dual-cognitive processing frameworks to provide a theoretical grounding to define discipline-specific intuition. We hypothesize that intuition can be observed in disciplinary experts through discussions of experience and decision-making processes. Interviews were conducted with professionals in three fields - engineering, nursing, and business management - that engage intuition in decision-making. A comparative analysis of emergent themes is presented to understand similarities and differences in use and definition across these disciplines. Parallel grounded theory and critical incident technique approaches were used to identify perceptions and incidents of intuition. Results suggest that intuition can be defined as a "sense of knowing" that is context specific and at least partly attributable to experience. Inclusion of multiple fields and comparisons across disciplines form the foundation for our future work focusing solely on engineering intuition.