| Summary: | Across all fields of management research, uncertainty is largely considered an aversive
state that people and organizations cope with unwillingly and generally aim to avoid. However,
theories based on principles of uncertainty reduction overlook opportunities arising from
uncertainty creation. Building on recent research in management, cognition and neuroscience, we
expand current conceptualizations of uncertainty by introducing a model of uncertainty
regulation where individuals employ opening and closing behaviors to achieve alignment
between preferred and experienced levels of uncertainty and with exogenous requirements for
effectiveness. We derive propositions for uncertainty regulation and work performance which
extend existing concepts of adaptation in uncertain environments to include deliberate
uncertainty creation and expansive agency. We discuss implications for dynamic models of
agentic goal striving, organizational support for individuals' uncertainty regulation, and
extensions to team- and organization-level phenomena
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