Organizational Decision-making Processes Research Articles

The disruptive emergence of integrated business planning

The aim of this paper is to present the topic of integrated business planning and place it in the current environment of the supply chain, logistics and distribution sectors and against the backdrop of increasing technological change. The aim is to make the reader think about the speed of innovation happening around us and the importance of harnessing new technology to improve analysis and planning within the realms of an organisation’s business processes, so as to make faster and more accurate decisions. It is based on the author’s understanding and experiences on this topic, which have been obtained by visiting and talking to many domestic and global retail, distribution and logistics organisations and trade bodies in the UK. It is not intended to be a highly researched/academic paper. Because of the confidential nature of engaging with organisations, most of the examples given are well known and in the public domain, but the general trends and information reflected in the paper are based on the author’s experience of the status of decision making in organisations. The observation made is that despite the advancement of technologies in the personal environment, in larger organisations, decision making is disconnected, less collaborative, slow and inefficient, with hours spent gathering data as opposed to using the time to analyse it. In the current environment of economic and operational turbulence, the author would like to raise awareness of a better, faster, more accurate way of making decisions by challenging the current organisational decision-making processes and technologies used.

Concealing paradoxes in decision-making during hospital hybridization - a systems theoretical analysis.

While previous health-care-related hybridity research has focused on macro- and micro-level investigations, this paper aims to study hybridization at the organizational level, with a specific focus on decision-making. The authors investigate how new politico-economic expectations toward a university hospital as a hybrid organization become internalized via organizational decision-making, resulting in the establishment of a new business collaboration and innovation-oriented unit. The authors employed a social systems theoretical framework to explore organizational decision-making processes involved in the establishment of the new hybrid hospital unit. Drawing on 15 interviews and nine organizational documents, the authors describe and analyze three decision-making cycles using the concepts of complexity, decision and justification. The findings reveal the challenging nature of decision-making during hybridization, as decisions regarding unprecedented organizational structures and activities cannot be justified by traditional decision premises. The authors show that decision-makers use a combination of novel justification strategies, namely, justification by problems, by examples and by obligations, to legitimize decisions oriented at non-traditional activities. Further, the analysis reveals how expectations of several societal systems, i.e. health care, education, science, law, economy and politics, are considered in decision-making taking place in hybrid organizations. The study draws attention to the complexity of decision-making in a hybrid context and highlights the role of justification strategies in partially reducing complexity by concealing the paradoxical nature of decision-making and ensuring the credibility of resulting decisions. Also, the study presents a move beyond the dualism inherent in many previous hybridity studies by illustrating the involvement of several societal systems in hybridization.

Integrating intuition and artificial intelligence in organizational decision-making

Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally changing organizational decision-making processes. With the abilities to self-learn and to improve decision quality, AI is now taking over many decision responsibilities that were formerly assigned to humans alone. However, the effectiveness of AI for ill-structured and uncertain decision environments is still in question. In such decision contexts that have no precedent on which to base a solution, humans have historically relied on their intuition to make decisions. Yet intuition, too, has been found to have weaknesses that restrict decision quality. Therefore, this article introduces a decision-making model that effectively integrates the strengths of both intuition and AI while minimizing the vulnerabilities of each method. The model specifies when and how both modes should be combined for effective organizational decision-making. In addition, the article presents important future research considerations relating to AI for both practitioners and academics.

Implications for Economic Security of the Three Seas Initiative Countries Resulting from Membership in the International Monetary Fund

Purpose: The paper aims to present the results of the studies on the impact associated with the membership of the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) countries in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on their economic security, especially in financial terms. Design/Methodology/Approach: The Three Seas Initiative was established in 2016 and is just developing its identity. Its future and possibilities of achieving set objectives will significantly depend on the economic capacity of countries, their stability and economic development, and their financial security. The IMF acts to benefit its members' financial security, especially in crises, in various manners. Countries can extend possibilities of obtaining resources by increasing their participation in the organization's decision-making process, and it depends on their financial capacity and decisions made by the country authorities. The research methods used herein primarily comprise the analysis of the IMF's documents and the 3SI and analyze statistical data. Findings: The 3SI countries do not have a strong position in the IMF, and stronger possibilities of influencing this institution's policy exist solely due to the countries' membership in the European Union. The IMF engaged financially in the region to a minimal extent since the countries' security was basically ensured. However, it was active by providing support in counseling, technical assistance, and participation in country authorities' reforms. Practical implications: The paper presents possibilities of cooperation of both parties - the 3SI countries and the IMF in economic security, both in the times of stable economic situation and in economic crises such as e.g., resulting from the global pandemic SARS-CoV-2. Originality/value: Original research.

Determinants of the decision-making process in organizations

The decision-making process is one of the most important elements of management in today’s organizations, mainly because it affects the success or failure of the entity. In highly uncertain environment, knowledge of factors influencing the decision-making process is essential.The aim of the article is to analyze the determinants of decision-making process in organization. For this purpose, Authors conducted relevant literature review, inductive and deducting reasoning and 29 in-depth interviews (IDI). The research was carried out in 23 local organizations with managers of various levels. The in-depth interviews ware structured and were conducted in the form of face-to-face personal conversations. The average duration of an interview was about 1 hour. The aim of the research was to find out, according to managers, what kind of determinants influence their decision-making process. Authors chose IDI as a main research tool due to the possibility of deepening and clarifying the knowledge about decision-making process in organizations. IDI allows to gain expert knowledge from the respondents’ direct experiences.The process of making decisions in organizations is determined by various factors: economic, social, organizational, personal and psychological. According to conducted research economic and organizational factors were considered to be the most important by the respondents. The managers identified the resources held by the company, its business objective and the economic account as the most important economic factors influencing the decision-making process. Leadership style and organizational structure have the most influence over the efficiency of decision making.

AI and its Opportunities for Decision-Making in Organizations: A Systematic Review of the Influencing Factors on the Intention to use AI

One domain of application of artificial intelligence (AI) is decision support, particularly in management. Although there are already research streams examining the interaction of AI and humans (e.g. the stream on "hybrid intelligence"), there are still numerous open research gaps - for example, a comprehensive overview of which factors favor the intention to use AI is missing. By conducting a systematic literature review, we identify the factors that potentially positively influence AI usage intentions for decision-making processes in organizations. From this, we create a framework that both provides practical implications for the successful use of AI in organizational decision-making processes and delivers further research approaches, for example, on the validity/ usability of proven IS adoption models in the present context.

Augmenting organizational decision-making with deep learning algorithms: Principles, promises, and challenges

The current expansion of theory and research on artificial intelligence in management and organization studies has revitalized the theory and research on decision-making in organizations. In particular, recent advances in deep learning (DL) algorithms promise benefits for decision-making within organizations, such as assisting employees with information processing, thereby augment their analytical capabilities and perhaps help their transition to more creative work. We conceptualize the decision-making process in organizations augmented with DL algorithm outcomes (such as predictions or robust patterns from unstructured data) as deep learning–augmented decision-making (DLADM). We contribute to the understanding and application of DL for decision-making in organizations by (a) providing an accessible tutorial on DL algorithms and (b) illustrating DLADM with two case studies drawing on image recognition and sentiment analysis tasks performed on datasets from Zalando, a European e-commerce firm, and Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregation website for movies, respectively. Finally, promises and challenges of DLADM as well as recommendations for managers in attending to these challenges are also discussed.

Implementasi Business Intelligence Pada Analisis Perkembangan Hasil Pertanian Provinsi Sumatera Selatan

In the process of data collection of agricultural food products and horticulture consists of several data covering the time, area, area of land, crop yields, and types of plants stored in the form of files with large amounts of data. The large amount of data can cause errors in compiling information for the process of analysis and evaluation for the agriculture department. The analysis process can be faster and more precise by implementing Business intelligence. Business intelligence is a concept and method for managing and analyzing data and facts into more effective information to improve the quality of organizational evaluation and decision-making processes. One form of information that can be provided from the application of business intelligence is a visual dashboard that can help display information that makes it easier to analyze the development of agricultural products efficiently and interactively. Processing data for analysis in this study using the Pentaho application. By implementing Business Intelligence, it is expected to be able to assist the Department of Food Agriculture and Horticulture in South Sumatra Province in analyzing the development of agricultural products

Ideological traditionalism and organisational innovation in Greek Orthodox ecclesiastical governance

ABSTRACT Studies of church governance approach religious change either as ‘soft’ transformation (ideological and discursive adjustments implemented by clerical élites) or as ‘hard’ restructuring (shifts in organisational decision-making processes and administrative forms). This article illustrates that the joint, rather than separate, consideration of the two types of change provides a more nuanced description of the internal dynamics of religious organisations. Employing a framework with comparative applicability, which breaks with standard theoretical approaches, the empirical application examines a case in which the two types of change coincided: the Orthodox Church of Greece in the late twentieth century, where a radically conservative ideological transformation accompanied a particular instance of bureaucratic modernisation (lay involvement in high-level ecclesiastical governance).

English

Niayes and Groundnut basin areas are among the largest strongholds of rainfed agriculture in Senegal. In the agricultural holdings of both agro-ecological areas, main speculations are far from optimizing their agronomic production potential. In order to analyze the organizational capacity and decision-making processes of producers, a global agronomic diagnostic work was undertaken out on the scale of 180 agricultural holdings through socio-economic and technical descriptions, while taking into account endogenous and exogenous factors of the agrarian environment. The results revealed technical and biophysical failures of the resources in their availability and/or use, but also a plethora of constraints which hinder the increase of agricultural activity and the dynamical transition of the unit. These constraints are justified by a precarious technical framework (-15%), a modest size of the agricultural unit (7.45 ha) and a small to medium crop rotation of which 42% of UAA for the first speculation, pearl millet. For the dry cereal, 19% N.P.K phosphate fertilizers use is rated with 26.05 kg ha-1, and 0.46 t ha-1 of background manure for an average yield of 0.59 t ha-1. These conjunctures point to a system of peasant production with low market capital, limited to the satisfaction of family needs. Key words: Family farms, farming practices, pearl millet, Niayes, groundnut basin, Senegal.

An exploratory teaching program in big data analysis for undergraduate students

Many of the world’s biggest discoveries and decisions in science, technology, business, medicine, politics, and society as a whole, are now being made on the basis of analyzing massive datasets. In this paper, exploratory teaching program is proposed. It provides a broad and practical introduction to big data analysis. This exploratory teaching program was designed and given in Department of Computer Engineering at Kocaeli University in the spring semester of 2018–2019. To assess the educational program’s impact on the learning process and to evaluate the acceptance and satisfaction level of students, they answered a questionnaire after finishing the program. According to students’ feedback, the exploratory teaching program is useful for learning how to analyze large datasets and identify patterns that will improve any company’s and organization decision-making process.

When and Why Do Organizations Respond to Environmental, Social, and Governance Issues?

Firms face growing pressures from multiple stakeholders on a variety of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. When do they respond, and why? We use media criticisms to identify a number of ESG issues that organizations face simultaneously – this allows us to model their interdependencies. We hypothesize that the risk of peer contamination and the need for reputational cleansing motivate organizations to respond to a focal issue to a greater extent, and that in conjunction with issue advantageousness and media gravity, both mechanisms produce even stronger effects on organizational action. Importantly, given that firms are criticized both in traditional and social media, our primary data, collected by RepRisk daily by screening over 80,000 sources globally in 15 languages, captures multiple stakeholders and media sources. This large and unique dataset involving 3,037 firms and 20 ESG issues between 2007 and 2016 allows us to produce two sets of results – panel data and matching analyses – generating a more nuanced understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the organizational decision-making process for responding to ESG issues. We contribute to the social evaluation literature, the attention-based view of the firm, the nonmarket strategy area, and research on the limits of media effects on organizational decision-making.

Towards a smart campus: supporting campus decisions with Internet of Things applications

ABSTRACT At universities worldwide, creating a ‘smart campus’ is gaining significance. This is a response to the increasingly dynamic use of the campus and the pressure on resources: energy, financial and human resources. The university community has become more mobile, student numbers more unpredictable and funding more uncertain. Consequently, campus strategies focus on resource efficiency and sharing space, requiring investment in management information to improve decision making. The Internet of Things (IoT) can help to provide big data about use patterns: by collecting real-time data on space utilization, users can make better use of current spaces and real estate managers can make better decisions about long-term demand. Furthermore, space utilisation data can be complemented with user feedback data and environmental variables, e.g. noise levels, luminance. In this research we identify the capabilities of existing IoT applications through a literature study. Literature also suggests that information from IoT applications is not utilized in organisational decision-making processes. Through four case studies we analyse these decision-making processes and identify the process-level requirements to make strategic decisions in campus management. Then we show how information from the IoT can be directly connected to these processes, thus providing a valuable addition of real-time data as input.

Representative Bureaucracy Through Staff With Lived Experience: Peer Coproduction in the Field of Substance Use Disorder Treatment.

This study extends the representative bureaucracy literature by theorizing and empirically testing how staff sharing lived experience with service users can serve as user representatives in service provision processes (i.e., the peer coproduction mechanism). Using survey data from a representative sample of substance use disorder treatment clinics in the United States, we explore factors associated with descriptive representation (the presence of staff with firsthand experience of a substance use disorder in both frontline treatment and senior positions) and directors' perceptions of recovering staff's potential to serve as user representatives in individual care and organizational decision-making processes. Recovering staff accounted for a third of the field's workforce, but the majority of the clinics did not employ them in senior staff positions. Regression results suggest that organizational leaders' recognition of recovering staff's unique representation capacities may facilitate greater descriptive representation and grant meaningful organizational decision-making authority to recovering staff. Multiple research and practice implications are discussed.

Do Female Directors Manipulate Earnings?

This study aims to examine the effect of female directors in firm’s earnings management for a sample of 263 Malaysian listed firms over 2013-2017 period. After running a robust panel regression, the result of this study shows that firm that have higher participation rate of women in the boardroom will have a higher tendency of manipulating earnings. The reason why there is a significant relationship between female directors and earnings management might be caused by the corporate culture pressure on women. The findings provide insight for industry and policymakers on the impact of gender diversity on earnings management. It may serve as a guideline in their selection of the organization's top management and decision-making process.
 Keywords: Female directors, earnings quality, women on board, earnings management.

Exploring social media usage in the public sector: Public employees' perceptions of ICT's usefulness in delivering value added

The present paper explores the effectiveness of the implementation and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the public sector, with a specific focus on the role of social media in improving both public decision-making processes and the quality of public services. We sought to deepen knowledge on this issue by disseminating structured questionnaires to Italian public servants, questioning them about the potentialities and criticalities of social media use in the public sector. Logistic regression analysis was used to analyse the data.The paper has two main goals. First, we aim to explore public servants' evaluation of social media's impact on public decision-making processes. Second, we are interested in understanding the main socio-demographic variables affecting public servants' perceptions about the importance of social media in these processes. This paper enriches the literature on public sector use of ICT and advances topical discussion on organizational change and decision-making processes in public administrations. In so doing, the paper reveals interesting practical and policy implications by highlighting the key aspects affecting social media's effectiveness and usefulness in the decision-making process and its impact on the public services delivered to the citizenry.

The Politics of Experimentation

Many startups have embraced formal experimentation — i.e., A/B testing — to improve the performance of their products and services. Experimentation, some have argued, should democratize innovation inside organizations by creating a platform to rigorously test new ideas, regardless of origin. In this article, we argue that experimentation's promise hinges on having the right organizational decision-making process — one that encourages innovation but without the added risk of unanticipated failures. We study this question by developing a model of experimentation inside organizations where decisions to implement are either centralized or decentralized — a tension identified by practitioners and scholars alike. We find that startups with centralized mechanisms that rely too much on the input of other teams benefit least from experimentation, as do ones with completely decentralized ones. In contrast, startups with mostly decentralized decisions, with a single authority that sets consistent thresholds for implementation, achieve growth but with less downside risk. Thus, without considering the politics that guide organizational decision-making, the benefits of experimentation may be limited.

Suggested use? On evidence‐based decision‐making in industrial ecology and beyond

AbstractIndustrial ecology (IE) research has well established expertise in accounting for the material stocks, flows, and associated impacts of industrial and consumer activities in a variety of scales and manifestations. As with many other science and social science fields, however, the pathways from IE research findings to policy and business decision‐making are often unclear and unsatisfactory. This issue creates a challenge for the application of industrial ecology to sustainable development. By reviewing several strands of literature, this article investigates alternative ways to generate and use research findings to support decision‐making and social change. It argues that advances in both the core and the emerging methods in IE complement each other to improve transparency and reliability of research evidence; extension and contextualization of current findings corresponding to different stages in policy‐making and organizational decision processes make research evidence more informative; a learning perspective makes research evidence valuable and used in more flexible ways. To better assist decision‐making for societal change, more dialogues between researchers of different methodological cultures and between researchers and other stakeholders and a paradigm shift in social systems for which industrial ecologists should be conscious and proactive are required.

REINTERPRETING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE REGARDING ORGANIZATION’S STRATEGIC AGENTS PERCEPTION FROM PSYCHOLOGY AND NEUROSCIENCE

Different perceptions of strategic agents in organizations can cause problems and opportunities. There is, therefore, the need to explore what may be the factors that can influence the formation of the perceptions of the strategic agents. We seek to explore the contemporary knowledge of psychology, based on a social rationality rather than economic. The brain, an important factor in social relation, is the locus of formation of the relation between past, present and future events. The objective of this essay is to propose a perspective for the analysis of the differences of the perceptions of the individuals in the organizations based on the psychology associated with a basic social logic of the functioning of the brain (social brain). The relationships between these time periods form the perceptions of the strategic agents in the moments in which they are and are in constant feedback, according to the results of the current perceptions. The contributions to the theory are in the integration of theories that can aid the study of the perception of the strategic agents. For management practice, this view is expected to contribute to the process of interpersonal relationship between employees and to facilitate the decision-making processes in organizations.

Hierarchical Decision-making using a New Mathematical Model based on the Best-worst Method

Decision-making processes in different organizations often have a hierarchical and multilevel structure with various criteria and sub-criteria. The application of hierarchical decision-making has been increased in recent years in many different areas. Researchers have used different hierarchical decision-making methods through mathematical modeling. The best-worst method (BWM) is a multi-criteria evaluation methodology based on pairwise comparisons. In this paper, we introduce a new hierarchical BWM (HBWM) which consists of seven steps. In this new approach, the weights of the criteria and sub-criteria are obtained by using a novel integrated mathematical model. To analyze the proposed model, two numerical examples are provided. To show the performance of the introduced approach, a comparison is also made between the results of the HBWM and BWM methodologies. The analysis demonstrates that HBWM can effectively determine the weights of criteria and sub-criteria through an integrated model.