Metaverse Meets Management: A Modular Approach to Augment Management Practices With Augmented and Virtual Reality

Abstract

Practitioners in strategic management often struggle to address the complexities of strategic planning, leading many companies to adopt digital tools to improve their decision-making processes. The metaverse paradigm of merging physical and digital worlds offers a promising platform for a deeper integration of digital capabilities into these practices. Metaverse interfaces such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) will play a critical role in making this integration possible. Yet, their potential in strategic management remains largely unexplored. This led to a lack of understanding of how immersive technologies can be utilized in the field, particularly in overcoming cognitive limitations associated with decision-making. This study addresses the gap with a twofold contribution. First, it leverages the concept of technology affordances to clarify the potential of AR and VR in mitigating cognitive bottlenecks. By examining the features of contemporary immersive tools, this article identifies cognitive affordances enabled by AR and VR and shows how these affordances can address cognitive limitations. Second, the article introduces a modular design toolkit for practitioners to create AR/VR applications tailored to their needs. We demonstrate our findings through practical examples and discuss managerial implications of adopting metaverse interfaces in organizational settings, as well as the potential downsides of their implementation.