Abstract
Research shows that there is currently a lack of a systematic way to identify strategic issues in organizations. While several factors have been reported to show significance or insignificance of a strategic issue, more research is still needed to understand how strategic decision-makers determine strategic issues faced by the organization and also how these issues are diagnosed. This becomes important as effective determination of strategic issues influences decision maker's agenda and priorities. Thus, this paper conducts 21 in-depth interviews with banking experts in Iran. Data analysis is done through grounded theory methodology. The findings of this study show that there are six groups of factors that affect issues to give the meaning of strategic for top managers of organization. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s2p553
Highlights
Strategic issues refer to events, developments, or trends which largely influence the performance of an organization (Ansoff, 1980)
The following main categories or factors influencing on identification of issues as strategic have been discovered: scanning, environmental monitoring, strategic dialogue, identifying potential important issues, screening, management context, organizational context, noises in the area of an issue, formation of strategic issues in the form of organization’s agenda
Strategic dialogue refers to all existing communications, debates, and discussions on strategic issues and the issue area is the venue of these measures (Hall et al, 2006)
Summary
Strategic issues refer to events, developments, or trends which largely influence the performance of an organization (Ansoff, 1980). According to Daft and Weick, strategic issues are social structures created in organizational context (Weick, 1979; Daft and Weick, 1984; Feldman, 1989; Weiss, 1989). What is perceived as a strategic issue in an organization might be understood as a tactical or irrelevant issue in another organization. Due to the existed ambiguities such as lack of clear information (March and Olsen, 1976) and complicated meanings of strategic issues (Weick, 1979), it is necessary to recognize specific factors that shape strategic issues. When an issue is recognized as a strategic issue, organization’s strategic resources and information processing capacities are allocated to them, which considerably influence the organization’s achievement or failure
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
