Strategic determinants: the context of managerial decision making

Abstract

Previous studies point to a range of factors as influencing managerial decision‐making processes. There are four major trends with regard to the studies. They are environmental antecedents, organisational antecedents, decision‐specific antecedents and individual managerial characteristics. While the majority of literature has chosen to focus in a specialised way on the influence of unidimensional variables there are a number of studies advocating the study of multiple dimensions simultaneously. This paper examines the findings from a qualitative research methodology, convergent interviewing, focussing on the impact of environmental, organisational, decision‐specific and individual characteristics, in combination with environmental and organisational characteristics on managerial decisions. Information from managers suggested decision‐specific and individual characteristics in combination with environmental and organisational characteristics, were highly relevant to the process of decision making. For all managers, managerial years of experience and the complexity and politicality of decision content were indicated as an important preconditions for determining the nature of managerial decision making. Furthermore, environmental and organisational factors such as environmentally determined time constraints (e.g. government policy) and staff conflict were important issues influencing managers’ decisions. A number of multidimensional interactions were posited from the findings. Implications for future research are discussed.