This paper investigates the relationship between the process of strategic decision-making and management and contextual factors. First, drawing on a sample of strategic decisions, it analyzes the process through which they are taken, into seven dimensions: comprehensiveness/rationality, financial reporting, rule formalization, hierarchical decentralization, lateral communication, politicization, problem-solving dissension. Second, these process dimensions are related to (1) decision-specific characteristics, both perceived characteristics and objective typologies of strategic decisions, (2) top management characteristics, and (3) contextual factors referring to external corporate environment and internal firm characteristics. Overall, the results support the view that strategic decision processes are shaped by a multiplicity of factors, in all these categories. But the most striking finding is that decision-specific characteristics appear to have the most important influence on the strategic decision-making process, as decisions with different decision-specific characteristics are handled through different processes. The evident dominance of decision-specific characteristics over management and contextual factors enriches the traditional ‘external control’ vs. ‘strategic choice’ debate in the area of strategic management. An interpretation of results is attempted and policy implications are derived. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Strategic decision-making processes: the role of management and context

SUE BIRLEY IS PROFESSOR OF management at Imperial College, London, England, Stanley Cromie is professor and director of the Centre for Management Education at the Ulster Business School, Ulster University, Northern Ireland, and Andrew Myers is with the Cranifield School of Management, England. This paper discusses the need for information in organisations and the particular relevance of non-documented data which is gathered by managers from a network of personal contacts. It examines some of the issues involved in assessing the characteristics of personal networks and proposes that network activiety, density and diversity are the crucial features of business networks. The paper suggests that personal networking is a particularly appropriate mechanism for information gathering by owners/managers of small organisations, examines the personal networks of 274 business proprietors and compares the findings of this study with similar ones conducted in the United States of America, Sweden and Italy. Results indi...

Entrepreneurial Networks: Their Emergence in Ireland and Overseas

Public and private sector decision making is studied with an experiment. The study compares decision making in a tax-supported general purpose governmental agency with that done by a business firm selling to a market, using a simulation to capture differences in the preferences and practices of mid-level managers working in the two sectors. The simulation calls for participating managers to assess the risk and prospect of adopting budgets tailored to match each sector. A cognitive culture that stresses analysis, speculation, bargaining, or networking is employed to fashion a budget appropriate for a public and a private sector organization, each with a controversial and a noncontroversial budget amount. The literature on public/private differences was consulted to make predictions, suggesting that public sector managers would favor bargaining and networking and private sector managers would favor analysis and speculation. The cognitive style literature suggests that managers favor budgets constructed with an approach that is consistent with their preferred cognitive style and see less risk in the choice, except in a public setting where risk would be unaffected. The study finds that private sector managers are more apt to support budget decisions made with analysis and less likely to support them when bargaining is applied. Public sector managers are less likely to support budget decisions backed by analysis and more likely to support those that are derived from bargaining with agency people.

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Comparing Public and Private Sector Decision-Making Practices

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate relationships between strategic planning practice, management participation and strategic planning effectiveness.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 87 questionnaires were collected from privately owned firms working in Egypt. Regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.Findings – Strategic planning practice, but not management participation, is significantly associated with strategic planning effectiveness. Further, both strategic planning practice and management participation jointly enhance the effectiveness of strategic planning.Research limitations/implications – Longitudinal data would be needed in order to prove that causal relationships exist. The common method bias restricts the inferences that can be drawn from this study. It would be useful to explore whether the results hold when other integrative variables are taken into consideration.Practical implications – A wide use of strategic planning tools is one important element in organ...

Planning and participation as determinants of strategic planning effectiveness: Evidence from the Arabic context

Purpose – Seeks to investigate the extent to which CEOs shape the process of making strategic decisions (SDs). Despite the significant research interest in this topic, knowledge is still incomplete.Design/methodology/approach – Using evidence from a sample of 107 SDs, studied in Greece, the present paper explores the influence of CEO personality and demographic characteristics on the process of making SDs. A number of environmental and internal organisational variables are used as control variables measuring the broader context.Findings – The results suggest that the broader context is on average more influential than the CEO. However, the CEO's demographic characteristics appear to influence several process characteristics (i.e. rationality, hierarchical decentralisation and politicisation). CEO personality characteristics do not appear to have any significant influence on the process.Research limitations/implications – This paper focuses on only a few personality and demographic characteristics. The use...

Do CEOs shape the process of making strategic decisions? Evidence from Greece

decision-making processes are compared in American and British subsidiaries in Britain to investigate how far processual characteristics as distinct from structural features, may be implanted in subsidiaries abroad. Managements in the British owned subsidiaries tend to route their biggest decisions through the formalities of standing committees in conformity with customary procedures, taking a comparatively long time to do so. Managements in the American owned subsidiaries tend to rely on informally assembled working groups which help to arrive at a decision comparatively rapidly through a process which does not ostensibly follow any recognized procedure. The British mode is formal within a non-formalized customary pattern, the American mode informal within a formalized frame.

Implanted decision-making: american owned firms in britain [i]

The limits of trade union power in organisational decisionmaking

Central to the concerns of management and to writers of organisation theory are the considerations of strategic decision making. The Organisational Analysis Research Unit, in the Management Centre, University of Bradford, has been researching the process of strategic decision making in thirty British organisations, a sample ranging from orchestras to a police force with industrial and service organisations in between. The research was initiated in response to the apparent lack of any systematic comparative studies of decision making appearing elsewhere.

Geoffrey R. Mallory

Papers

Implanted decision-making: american owned firms in britain [i]

The limits of trade union power in organisational decisionmaking

Strategic Decision Making in British Organisations