KARI: An Experiential Exercise Using Digital Analytics Platforms to Develop Managerial Judgment Under Uncertainty

Digital analytics platforms increasingly shape management education, but students may treat their outputs as decision rules rather than inputs for managerial judgment. This article presents KARI (Knowledge-to-Action Reasoning through Indicators), a single-session experiential learning exercise for late undergraduate, graduate, MBA, and executive learners. Small teams analyze the same dataset through different indicator families, compare conflicting conclusions, and explain how heuristics, cognitive biases, contextual assumptions, and tool dependence shape decision-making under uncertainty. Guided cross-team challenge and instructor-led debriefing help students distinguish context-sensitive heuristics from rigid rule application and revise their reasoning in response to contradictory evidence. The exercise requires minimal instructor preparation, no prior technical expertise, and has been implemented multiple times in graduate finance and analytics courses. Instructors can adapt KARI to strategy, operations, marketing analytics, HR analytics, and other management education settings.