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This study aims to apply the resource-based and upper-echelons perspectives to integrate concepts of strategic decision-making (i.e. speed and quality) and transformational leadership behavior (i.e. inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, individualized consideration and idealized influence) to examine how these resources are influenced by the characteristics of top managers (i.e. demographic backgrounds and entrepreneurial orientation) to affect firm performance.

Using evidence from a sample of 111 top managers from different firms in Taiwan, this research examined the relationships among the selected variables using two versions of the designed questionnaire: one for the leader, and the other for the followers. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used to analyze the data.

The findings reveal the following: the entrepreneurial orientation of top managers does affect their leadership style, which affects firm performance; if top managers display traits of transformational leadership, then firm performance will be higher, likely because transformational leaders tend to make high-quality decisions and strategic decision-making speed was influenced by the experience of top managers and the inspirational motivation provided by transformational leadership.

This study makes three specific contributions: improving the limitations of demographics-based top-management studies by investigating both demographics and psychological characteristics; advancing research on the relationships between entrepreneurial orientation and performance by integrating transformational leadership behaviors and examining the proposed research model from a resource-based perspective.

International management researchers have examined the relationships between many components of strategy including mode of entry (e.g., Anderson and Gatignon, 1986; Hill, Huang and Kim, 1990; Kim and Huang, 1992; Kogut and Singh, 1988), international collaboration (e.g., Bresser and Harl, 1986; Buckley and Casson, 1988; Contractor and Kundu, 1988; Osborn and Baughn, 1990; Parkhe, 1993), and global integration vs. local responsiveness (e.g., Athanassiou and Nigh, 1999; Prahalad and Doz, 1987; Roth and Morrison, 1990; Taggart, 1998), among other things. Other management scholars have written about decision‐making from multiple perspectives including bounded rationality (Simon, 1955) and speed (Eisenhardt, 1989; Nordtvedt, 2000). Another subject of interest to management scientists has been that of leadership and its influence on organizational performance (e.g., Petrullo & Bass, 1961; Stodgill, 1974; Burns, 1978; and Bass, 1985). Although these three dimensions of the management discipline (i.e., international strategies, decision‐making, and strategic leadership) are individually important to organizational success, they have not yet been collectively researched or conceptually reviewed to understand how the nature of their interaction affects the internationalization of the multinational corporation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a virtual reality (VR)-based and user-oriented decision support system for interior design and decoration. The four-phase decision-making process of the system is verified through a case study of an office building.

Different “spatial layouts” are presented by VR for users to decide their preference (Phase 1). According to the selected spatial layout, a “spatial scene” is constructed by VR and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to determine the spatial scene preference (Phase 2). Based on the binary integer programming method, the system provides the optimal preliminary solution under a limited decoration budget (Phase 3). Finally, the consistency between the overall color scheme and pattern is fine-tuned by VR in order to obtain the final solution (Phase 4).

The questionnaire survey results show that decision makers generally affirm the operation and application of VR, and especially recognize the advantages in the improvement of VR-based interior design feasibility, communication efficiency and design decision-making speed. The optimization of the costs and benefits enables decision makers to effectively evaluate the impact of design decisions on subsequent project implementation during the preliminary design process.

The VR-based decision support system for interior design retains the original immersive experience of VR, and offers a systematic multiple criteria decision- making and operations research optimization method, thus, providing more complete decision-making assistance. Compared with traditional design communication, it can significantly reduce cognitive differences and improve decision-making quality and speed.

The competencies that need to be developed and deployed in coping with accelerating changes in the business environment have been the subject of much work dating back at least to the 1960s. Two broad themes are discernible in this work. On the one hand there are those who argue that the speed of change is so fast that organisations and managers who can respond almost instinctively and improvise responses quickly will do well. On the other, there are those who argue that more formalised systems of strategic development and control are needed to give organisations a competitive advantage. The results from an empirical study of some 267 organisations are used to shed some light on this debate. The evidence supports the idea that a growing organisation is associated with the existence of internal strategic systems that support the firm’s growth ambitions, allowing it to make not only “good” business decisions and to monitor how well the organisations is doing against its strategy, but to do so speedily.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically test the link between knowledge management practices, problem-solving processes and organizational performance.

This study uses survey data from 112 leading Italian companies. To test the structural relations of the research model, we used the partial least squares method.

Results show a strong relationship between knowledge management practices and intermediate activities of creative problem solving and problem-solving speed. In addition, creative problem solving has a direct impact on both organizational and financial performances, whereas problem-solving speed has a direct effect only on financial performance.

The focus on top Italian firms limits the generalizability of results.

This study provides empirical evidence of the importance of knowledge management practices for problem-solving activities and firm performance.

The present paper fills an important gap in the extant literature by conceptualizing and empirically testing the relationship between knowledge management, problem-solving processes (creative problem solving and problem-solving speed) and firm performance. This study is the first ever to study these relationships within the Italian context.

The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical model for examining how innovation speed mediates the relationship between knowledge management (KM) and performance and empirically tests the proposed model using data collected in the USA and China over three years.

To avoid common method bias and increase ability to draw causal effects of KM on performance, data were collected over three years. KM data were collected by survey; innovation speed data were collected in the following year; and sales growth and gross margin data were collected over the next three years. After merging the three data sets, the final empirical data used for this study contained data from 354 USA and 647 Chinese firms. Multiple regression analyses were used to test the research hypotheses. Sobel mediation tests were performed to test the mediating effects of innovation speed on the relationship between KM and performance.

Innovation speed has a U-shaped relationship with performance in both US and Chinese firms. Knowledge generation has an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation speed in both US and Chinese firms. Knowledge dissemination increases innovation speed in US firms but not in Chinese firms. While knowledge application increases innovation speed in the US firms, it decreases innovation speed in Chinese firms.

This study is among the first to propose and empirically test the KM-innovation speed-performance relationship. This paper advances the KM literature by demonstrating that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between knowledge generation and innovation speed and that there is a U-shaped relationship between innovation speed and performance. In addition, this study contributed to the cross-national study of KM.

This paper aims to examine the process and characteristics of strategic decision making (SDM), and their influencing factors in Chinese small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs).

This study adopted a case‐study research design. It collected data from 20 Chinese SMEs with multiple approaches, including interviews with owners/managers, focus groups, gathering of internal documents and access to their web site.

Several important conclusions can be drawn. First, the steps involved in the SDM process in Chinese SMEs are less complex than the theoretical models; second, Chinese SME owners/managers rely heavily on their personal networks for identifying opportunities in the business environment, and for information search and advice; third, a firm's ownership significantly influences the degree of participation and the level of political activities in the SDM process; and fourth, decisions made in Chinese SMEs can be implemented quickly partly due to slack legal enforcement in China.

For SME owners/managers, a better understanding of the decision‐making routes provides a basis for enhancing the quality of the decision‐making process. They can expand and/or improve the steps in executing their decision‐making process. For Chinese government policy‐makers, they can better sponsor training programs in strategic management and develop mentoring programs among SME owners/managers for better connecting them with peers and external advisors. For SME researchers, this paper has pointed out several important areas for future research.

This research is one of the pioneering studies on SDM in Chinese SMEs. It provides a detailed description of the SDM process and several important characteristics associated with this process in Chinese SMEs, and thus contributed significantly to our understanding and potential improvement of SDM in Chinese SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to review literature about the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in strategic situations and identify the research that is needed in the area of applying AI to strategic marketing decisions.

The approach was to carry out a literature review and to consult with marketing experts who were invited to contribute to the paper.

There is little research into applying AI to strategic marketing decision-making. This research is needed, as the frontier of AI application to decision-making is moving in many management areas from operational to strategic. Given the competitive nature of such decisions and the insights from applying AI to defence and similar areas, it is time to focus on applying AI to strategic marketing decisions.

The application of AI to strategic marketing decision-making is known to be taking place, but as it is commercially sensitive, data is not available to the authors.

There are strong implications for all businesses, particularly large businesses in competitive industries, where failure to deploy AI in the face of competition from firms, who have deployed AI to improve their decision-making could be dangerous.

The public sector is a very important marketing decision maker. Although in most cases it does not operate competitively, it must make decisions about making different services available to different citizens and identify the risks of not providing services to certain citizens; so, this paper is relevant to the public sector.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first papers to probe deployment of AI in strategic marketing decision-making.

Purpose: The purpose of the chapter is to determine the dependence of the process of decision making in modern business systems on their organizational structure and to substantiate the necessity for considering the requirements to the process of decision making during designing the organizational structure of a business system.

Methodology: A new simplified classification of the organizational structure of business systems according to the criterion of complexity is offered, and its two main types are distinguished – organizational structure of low complexity and organizational structure of high complexity.

Conclusions: According to the offered classification, dependence of the process of decision making in modern business systems on complexity of their business structure at each stage of making of managerial decisions is determined. As a result of analysis of statistical data, it is determined that business systems with organizational structure of low complexity dominate in Russia. By the example of modern Russian business systems with the organizational structure of high complexity – Sberbank, Lukoil, Gazprom, and Rosneft – it is shown that formation of the structure of this type and supporting its functioning requires resources and thus is inaccessible for most modern business systems. Moreover, the expected advantages, related to high probability of making of optimal managerial decisions, are not always gained in practice.

Originality/value: It is substantiated that the process of decision making in modern business systems largely depends on the complexity of their organizational structure. With increase of complexity of a business system, resource intensity of decision making and duration of this process increase, but the risk of nonoptimal decisions decreases. Organizational structure of low complexity is peculiar for business systems that have deficit of financial and human resources, which does not allow using the means of optimization and fully control the process of decision making. However, in this case, managerial decisions are made much quicker. In the conditions of modern market economy, it is necessary to make quick optimal decisions, which cannot be achieved within the organizational structure of either low or high complexity. Thus, it is necessary to find a way to make quick optimal managerial decisions beyond the design of organizational structure.

The purpose of the paper is to report on research in cultural differences in decision‐making styles in project teams composed of team members from different nationalities. Differences in decision making in mainly German teams vs mainly Swedish teams was assessed.

A sequential mixed‐method approach was used, starting with interviews to develop a grounded theory, followed by survey to test the theory. Factor and regression analyses allowed for identification of the cultural antecedents of the identified differences in decision making.

Locus of control differences in decision making were identified, together with factors for differences in decisions, namely decision‐making style, process, and involvement. Correlated cultural antecedents to these factors, in the form of personal attributes, were found.

Although the research design provides for some credibility of the results, the scope of the study is limited mainly to the engineering and construction industry in the two countries.

The study helps team members and project managers to understand the impact of their cultural differences on decision‐making process and style. Through that the study helps to minimize the potential friction when working on multicultural projects. Recommendations for practitioners are provided.

The idiosyncrasies of decision making in multicultural projects are researched using the example of Sweden and Germany. A model is built which extends existing project management theory. The paper also provides insights into the lived experiences of practicing project managers in multicultural teams and gives hints on how to overcome cultural barriers.