Strategic Decisions

For anyone faced with the challenge of making strategic decisions, this book will show readers how to choose the strategic models best suited to their needs.

Over the past ten years, there has been growing interest in the process of strategic decision-making among both managers and researchers. Strategic decisions are important for five main reasons: They are large-scale, risky and hard to reverse; they are a bridge between deliberate and emerging strategies; they can be a major source of organizational learning; they play an important part in the development of individual managers and they cut accross functions and academic disciplines. Strategic Decisions summarizes the current state of the art in research on strategic decision-making, with chapters prepared by leading strategy researchers. The editors also present implications for current application and proposed directions for future research.

This book is a commendable source of reference for entrepreneurship researchers. It offers insight into a number of focused research accounts that may assist other researchers in their entrepreneurship research proposals and execution. . . the literature review section will be of particular value to such early scholars of the field. The book is highly recommended for postgraduate entrepreneurship students and would be worthy of filling a space on any active entrepreneurship researcher s bookshelf. David Douglas, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research Strategic choices made by entrepreneurs have major consequences for SME performance. This book explores the factors that influence entrepreneurial strategic decisions using a cognitive theoretical framework. The proposed model, based on a dual processing approach, integrates motivation, emotions and information processing modes and is tested in several empirical studies. The results show the model s potential for furthering interesting research agendas in entrepreneurial cognition research. The authors also reveal that entrepreneurial cognitions can be elicited and represented in the form of cognitive maps. The structural complexity of the cognitive maps (cognitive complexity) is an important prerequisite of effective strategic decisions and is a core concept for the advancement of our knowledge in entrepreneurial cognition. The book is an informed and interesting exploration of entrepreneurial cognition with both theoretical and methodological contributions to this field of research. Entrepreneurial Strategic Decision-Making will be of great interest to undergraduate students and academics in the field of entrepreneurship. Policymakers will learn from this book to understand the distinctions between various types of entrepreneurial decision-makers and the way they make strategic decisions.

Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.

This book presents a diverse set of decision-making methodologies to solve some of the most important decisions that most organizations face today. It is an excellent demonstration of some great challenges in our society in the area of sustainability. These great challenges, ranging from sustainability in logistics to the use of renewable energies, needs to be urgently addressed. Sustainability has become one of the most important topics in management and many organizations are taking big steps towards sustainability. Organizations are attempting to use cleaner production technologies and renewable energies sources, to improve health and safety issues within their industries and the products and services they offer. These points involve several important strategic and managerial decisions, highlighted in this book. The book can be used by decision-makers and policy-makers as exemplary guidelines to solve sustainability problems.

Today's world is complex and getting more so each day. Huge multinational corporations, international crisis and fast breaking events require most people to make decisions on a daily basis without the tools to understand the long term impact that today's decision might create. Because most people have never really been trained in how to make important complex decisions most people rely on experience, and 'gut reaction' which is okay for many decisions, but not okay for decision that will have meaningful impact on organizations and individual. Decision makers need to develop the art and science of strategic decision making. Here, Professor Thomas Martin explains the need for decision makers to modify their thinking about how they deal with acquiring and analyzing information in each of the decision-making process steps. This approach requiring thinking modification will lengthen the process, make it more complex, and to some more arduous, but the comprehensiveness of the new thinking approach should lead to improved and more effective decision making. In this book, Dr. Martin presents a thinking modification framework that asserts that in the decision-making process, there are three situational states — a current state, future state, and a transitional state that one must deliberate in finding a solution. For each of these situational states, Martin develops an identical five-step process to determine the best decision to make. The steps of this process include: • Change-Needing Situational Analysis • Challenge Framing & Causal Analysis • Generating Solution Ideas • Choosing a Solution Set • Implementation and Aftermath Planning This book will appeal to decision makers, leaders, and students of management who want a specific framework that details the process behind making strategic, well-informed decisions.

Strategic Decision Making provides an effective, formal methodology that provides help with decision making problems, especially strategic ones with high stakes involving human perceptions and judgements. Focusing on applying the AHP to decision-making problems, Strategic Decision Making covers problems in the realms of business, defence and governance. Using case studies drawn from years of experience, the book discusses decision making for real life problems and includes many worked examples and solutions to problems throughout. The reader will gain comprehensive exposure to the extent of assistance that a formal methodology, such as AHP, can provide to the decision maker in evolving decisions in complex and varied domains.

Turbulence is not new to the business world. In fact, turbulence is increasing, and managers are seeing teams spinning their wheels. Management systems are in a state of crisis and operations are more complex. The old top-down operations mode no longer suffices. Today's businesses demand speed and increased accuracy, forcing everyone to re-evaluate chains of command and tear down the walls between functions. Amid the responsibilities of traditional management lies problem solving. The push is toward moving decision-making authority down the ladder to all levels. Managers are no longer equipped to or capable of making the number and variety of necessary decisions in a vacuum. The current mode is to have employees deal directly with workplace issues and take corrective action without complaint and without management involvement. Coping with this reality and preparation for these improvements in workplace problem solving requires interest and motivation. Strategic Decision Making for Successful Planning can facilitate this by demystifying and simplifying the process. The book bridges philosophy and theory and puts together a practical integration of all the tools necessary to get results from your investment of time, energy, and money. What is unique about this book is while it's based on a strong academic foundation, it does not get bogged down in the human-planning or psychological process of solving problems. It doesn't provide "pie-in-the-sky" creative solutions or a five-year process for solving problems and planning for the future. Numerous techniques and tools are included to make the book the right balance between practical and academic. The book also includes an extensive case study to illustrate points made in the text.