The use of information from the environment in the strategic decision-making process of Brazilian and American business owners of small business

Patricia Viveiros De Castro Krakauer,Martinho Isnard Ribeiro De Almeida

doi:10.4013/base.2016.132.02

Abstract

This study aims to understand the practices of Brazilian and American small and medium enterprises with regard to the use of environmental information in the strategic decision-making process. Some aspects were studied in depth: description of the activities performed by these business owners regarding the environmental information and analysis of the differences and similarities between the practices of business owners in the two countries. The research is of an exploratory nature, with a qualitative approach that used the mapping of experiences as a method. The results suggest that both Brazilians and Americans sought to use information from the environment as an aid in the process of strategic decision-making. Some differences were noticed between Brazilian and American practices: the use of intuition, the sharing with family members and the dissemination of environmental information among team members. This study may contribute to the competitiveness of smaller companies in Brazil, which are still susceptible to a high mortality rate.Keywords: environmental information, strategic decision, small and medium enterprises, Brazilian and Americans business owners.

Highlights

Several changes are observed in contemporary organizations, and information management has significant prominence in the search for competitive advantages
This study tried to obtain the experiences of owners of small and medium enterprises, who are the social subjects of this research
Analyzing the drivers of decision-making processes, we can suggest that the majority of them is started according to business needs, and few cases were cited where the will or the benefit of the entrepreneur would be the initial motivator, which corresponds to a comment by Elbanna (2006)

Summary

Introduction

Several changes are observed in contemporary organizations, and information management has significant prominence in the search for competitive advantages. Despite the complexity of the organizational decision-making process, it is part of the life of the organization, and the combination of culture, information and consensus can make it more efficient (Choo, 2006). From this point of view, information from the environment is essential for the organizational decision-making process, assisting the executive in the evaluation of possible alternatives. In the case of strategic decisions, the environmental information and analysis are essential, because these decisions affect the course of the company as a whole and relate to long-term decisions, which are complex and hard to change quickly, as defined by Ansoff (1997)

Objectives

Methods

Results