"Corporate Leaders' Decision Styles, Entrenchment and Disruptive Strategies: A Conceptual Framework"

Abstract

Decision making is a key responsibility of top management team (TMT) members, including CMOs (Chief Marketing Officers), yet, ineffective decision making is increasingly recognized as a problem at the top rungs of organizations. By combining insights from past literature with those obtained from a grounded study using qualitative data from 23 CMO interviews, we propose a conceptual framework for understanding CMO decision styles, appraisals of entrenchment, and disruption strategies used, as well as, the mechanisms that connect these concepts. Throughout we intersperse conceptual arguments with verbatim comments of CMOs obtained from our field work and develop propositions to guide future research. We also outline implications and limitations of the proposed framework.