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Decision-making plays a vital role in business. Yet as a trait, it is often overlooked when identifying, assessing, onboarding and empowering leadership talent. This study, therefore, aims to focus on the dimensions of organisational decision-making and investigate whether it should be an integral factor in the hiring process. The survey also looks at the relationships between decision-making and executive leadership, talent strategy and employee satisfaction. Could good decision-making as a trait be a factor when it comes to retention, improving organisational thinking and thriving leadership?

A quantitative and qualitative survey was commissioned and conducted by FT Longitude, part of the Financial Times Group. This included a questionnaire sent out to 400 senior executives at C-suite, C-1 and C-2 levels. The respondents were from companies with more than 1,000 employees in 13 industries and from five countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. This was also accompanied by in-depth interviews with three experts from both the public and private sector.

Almost two-thirds (63%) of senior executives have resigned or considered resigning due to frustration with organisational decision-making, while 29% have considered quitting because they were frustrated with the way a company makes decisions. More than a third (34%) resigned for this reason. Yet, a quarter of senior executives say that their decision-making experience was not explicitly discussed before starting their job. Senior executives who were asked about decision-making in interviews were 1.4 times more likely to be satisfied with their jobs. The ability to make decisions should therefore play a central role in hiring senior executives.

Decision-making as a trait has been neglected when hiring executives. For the first time, this research shows how significant it is for leadership teams. If senior executives are to improve organisational decision-making, this trait needs codifying in HR processes. This has led Kingsley Gate to embed it in recruitment profiling.

This monograph seeks to summarise the key influences of a role‐based perspective on leadership when making decisions as to how organisational resources can best be deployed.

Application of new frameworks provides insight into the leadership roles executives can adopt when part of formal, informal and temporary groups within the organisation's senior management team and those parts of the organisation for which they are responsible. The methodology adopted is qualitative, focusing on application of previously developed frameworks.

Adoption of an appropriate leadership role, and the timely switch from one role to another as circumstances change, are found to facilitate improvement in the ability of executives to mobilise organisational resources, and in so doing effectively address those challenges with which the organisation is faced.

A one‐organisation intensive case study of a multinational engineering company engaged in the design, development and manufacture of rotating turbomachinery provides the platform for the research. The research intent is to validate two frameworks in a different organisation of a similar demographic profile to those in which the frameworks were developed. The frameworks will require validating in organisations of different demographic profiles.

The concepts advanced, and implications discussed, provide an insight into the role‐based nature of leadership. The practical steps individual executives can take to develop their ability to adopt different leadership roles are highlighted.

This monograph is an investigation into, and study of the contribution of theory that provides insight into, the process by which executives effectively mobilise organisational resources. This differs from the original contributions to theory, which focused on methodology, data gathering and validation in contrast with the current study that is focused on practical application.

The purpose of this study is to fill the gap by investigating the relationship between age and other demographics on decision-making and leadership styles of executives in the non-profit sector.

This study is a quantitative research using correlation analysis and analysis of variance. The quantitative approach establishes facts, makes predictions and tests stated hypothesis and used the Pearson correlation coefficient, the ANOVA and the two-way analysis of variance. This study used surveys to collect data.

H1 states that there will be no significant difference in the decision-making models used among non-profit organizational leaders (rational, intuitive, dependent, spontaneous and avoidant) based on demographic variables: gender and age. H2 states that there will be no significant difference in the leadership style used among non-profit organizational executives (selling, telling, delegating and participating) and different dimensions of demographic variables: gender and age.

This study explored the relationship between the demographics, age and gender and the decision-making models (rational, intuitive, dependent, spontaneous and avoidant) and leadership styles (selling, telling, delegating and participating) of executives in non-profit organizations. The age of the executives also showed to be important factors that influenced executive’s leadership styles and decision-making models as well.

Rational decision-making as reflected to in this study has been used by older, possibly more experienced non-profit executives. This model is favorable towards making decisions on complicated issues. The final choice rational decision-makers select will maximize the outcome; it is assumed that the decision-maker will choose the alternative that rates the highest and get the maximum benefits (Robbins and Decenzo, 2003, pp. 141-142). The researcher suggests that non-profit executives, especially the younger executives, should attend management and leadership conferences that focus on rational decision-making models as concerns business strategies and making the best choices based on possible alternatives.

Rational decision-making as reflected to in this study has been used by older, possibly more experienced non-profit executives. This model is favorable towards making decisions on complicated issues. The final choice rational decision-makers select will maximize the outcome; it is assumed that the decision-maker will choose the alternative that rates the highest and get the maximum benefits (Robbins and Decenzo, 2003, pp. 141-142). The researcher suggests that non-profit executives, especially the younger executives, should attend management and leadership conferences that focus on rational decision-making models as concerns business strategies and making the best choices based on possible alternatives.

This is an original piece of research that contributes to the literature on leadership style.

Decision-makers must be well-informed to successfully impact the future of the business. The purpose of this study was to explore experiences of US fashion retail executives when making business decisions to understand what resources and strategies are utilized within the decision-making process. Additionally, the role of academic research within executive decision-making process was explored.

This study utilized a phenomenological approach to understand the experiences of fashion retail executives when engaging in business decision-making. Fifteen US fashion retail executives participated in the study. Data were collected through in-depth individual interviews and thematically coded to gain a holistic perspective of the decision-making process within the fashion retail industry.

As the result of the data analysis and interpretation, three topical areas emerged:: “Incredible Amounts of Information,” “Industry Specific Academic Research” and “Have a Clear Road Map.” The findings suggested that while the facts gleaned from internal and external data are of great importance to fashion professionals, insights gathered from social media are equally influential within the decision-making process. The authors identified five major strategies utilized consistently by fashion retail executives regardless of the type of business they represented: collaboration, adaptability, speed, gut instinct and creativity.

The results are important to fashion retail companies for improving internal decision-making processes. The identified resources and strategies of the decision-making process can be incorporated into fashion program curricula and considered as learning outcomes when preparing future industry professionals.

Limited studies have explored the decision-making process specific to the fashion retail environment, an uncertain and ever-changing industry. Further, the study shed light on the opportunity for academic research use in fashion retail decision-making and contributes to the literature by developing a fashion retail decision-making model.

Ethical decisions determine which individuals and/or groups benefit, and which suffer. Such decisions by executives impact front-line providers directly and customers indirectly; they are important because repercussions in service interactions feel personal. The purpose of this paper is to fill an important gap in the service literature by exploring how high-level executives make ethical decisions, creating values and culture within an organization; the results include testable propositions.

The research used a grounded theory approach, wherein high-level executives in successful service organizations responded through in-depth interviews. Complete interview transcripts were analyzed using standard qualitative methodology, including open coding to better understand and categorize the data, axial coding to seek out crucial relationships between concepts, and selective coding to develop research propositions.

Data analysis revealed two groups of interviewees, one more outcome-oriented in decision making and the other more process-oriented. The organizations led by more outcome-oriented executives have strong family-like (or paternalistic) cultures, whereas the organizations led by more process-oriented executives value adaptability and diversity.

The executives interviewed are quite successful; therefore, it is not possible to make inferences about unsuccessful executives or those leading poorly performing organizations. Propositions developed relate that process-oriented executives use both analytical measures and intuition in decision making, whereas outcome-oriented respondents rely more heavily on analytical measures.

Service executives apparently make ethical decisions while focusing either on processes or on outcomes; members of these two groups use different evaluative criteria to identify a successful decision. Decisions relating to people within the organization are perceived by the executives to be especially salient, apparently owing to interpersonal interaction in services.

There are inherent social implications when ethical decisions are made, because these decisions determine which individuals or groups benefit, and which suffer.

This research is among the first to interview high-level service executives about their ethical decision making when their choices define culture and values within their organizations. Findings offer a new look at how differences between executives that focus on processes and those that focus on outcomes may shape organizational cultures and lead to consideration of different criteria in making and evaluating decisions.

In the business and data analytics community, intuition has not been discussed widely in terms of its application to executive decision-making. However, the purpose of this paper is to focus on new global research that combines intuition, trust and analytics in terms of how well C-level executives trust their intuition.

Our Fulbright research, as described in this paper and performed by colleagues from the United States, Canada, Poland and Italy, examines executives’ as well as other less experienced employees’ preferences for different types of intuition versus data analysis. This study set out to better understand the degree to which executives prefer intuition versus analysis and the relationship between these approaches to decision-making. Our research combines elements of a review, a cross-cultural/cross-company survey study and a biometrics study in interoception. The research team has a multidisciplinary background in business, information technology, strategy, trust management, statistics and neuroscience.

Based on our research, the main findings are as follows. The use of and preference for intuition types change as employees gain more experience. However, there may be intuition styles that are more static and trait-like, which are linked to roles, differentiating managers from leaders. Using “inferential intuition” and “seeing the big picture” go hand in hand. Listening to your body signals can promote improved intuition. Cross-cultural differences may impact executive decision-making. Executives often prefer to use their intuition over analysis/analytics.

This research could be expanded to have a larger sample size of C-level executives. We had 172 responses with 65% C-level executives and 12% directors. However, a recent survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit on intuition used by executives had a sample of 174 executives around the world, which is comparable with our sample size.

From our research, executives should continue to apply their experiential learning through intuition to complement their use of data in making strategic decisions. We have often discounted the use of intuition in executive decision-making, but our research highlights the importance of making it a critical part of the executive decision-making process.

Based on the results of our survey and biometrics research, executives apply their intuition to gain greater confidence in their decision-making. Listening to their body signals can also improve their intuitive executive awareness. This complements their use of data and analytics when making executive decisions.

The strategic management literature emphasizes the concept of business intelligence (BI) as an essential competitive tool. Yet the sustainability of the firms’ competitive advantage provided by BI capability is not well researched. To fill this gap, this study attempts to develop a model for successful BI deployment and empirically examines the association between BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage. Taking the telecommunications industry in Malaysia as a case example, the research particularly focuses on the influencing perceptions held by telecommunications decision makers and executives on factors that impact successful BI deployment. The research further investigates the relationship between successful BI deployment and sustainable competitive advantage of the telecommunications organizations. Another important aim of this study is to determine the effect of moderating factors such as organization culture, business strategy, and use of BI tools on BI deployment and the sustainability of firm’s competitive advantage.

This research uses combination of resource-based theory and diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory to examine BI success and its relationship with firm’s sustainability. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and a two-phase sequential mixed method consisting of qualitative and quantitative approaches are employed. A tentative research model is developed first based on extensive literature review. The chapter presents a qualitative field study to fine tune the initial research model. Findings from the qualitative method are also used to develop measures and instruments for the next phase of quantitative method. The study includes a survey study with sample of business analysts and decision makers in telecommunications firms and is analyzed by partial least square-based structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that some internal resources of the organizations such as BI governance and the perceptions of BI’s characteristics influence the successful deployment of BI. Organizations that practice good BI governance with strong moral and financial support from upper management have an opportunity to realize the dream of having successful BI initiatives in place. The scope of BI governance includes providing sufficient support and commitment in BI funding and implementation, laying out proper BI infrastructure and staffing and establishing a corporate-wide policy and procedures regarding BI. The perceptions about the characteristics of BI such as its relative advantage, complexity, compatibility, and observability are also significant in ensuring BI success. The most important results of this study indicated that with BI successfully deployed, executives would use the knowledge provided for their necessary actions in sustaining the organizations’ competitive advantage in terms of economics, social, and environmental issues.

This study contributes significantly to the existing literature that will assist future BI researchers especially in achieving sustainable competitive advantage. In particular, the model will help practitioners to consider the resources that they are likely to consider when deploying BI. Finally, the applications of this study can be extended through further adaptation in other industries and various geographic contexts.

“All things are in a constant state of change”, said Heraclitus of Ephesus. The waters if a river are for ever changing yet the river endures. Every particle of matter is in continual movement. All death is birth in a new form, all birth the death of the previous form. The seasons come and go. The myth of our own John Barleycorn, buried in the ground, yet resurrected in the Spring, has close parallels with the fertility rites of Greece and the Near East such as those of Hyacinthas, Hylas, Adonis and Dionysus, of Osiris the Egyptian deity, and Mondamin the Red Indian maize‐god. Indeed, the ritual and myth of Attis, born of a virgin, killed and resurrected on the third day, undoubtedly had a strong influence on Christianity.

Purpose – This paper explores differences in decision-making approaches between physician executives and nonphysician executives in a managerial setting.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Fredrickson and Mitchell's (1984) conceptualization of the construct of comprehensiveness in strategic decision making is the central construct of this paper. Theories of professional identity, socialization, and institutional/dominant logics are applied to illustrate their impact on strategic decision-making approaches of physician and nonphysician executives.

Findings – This paper proposes that high-status professionals, specifically physicians, occupying senior management roles are likely to approach decision making in a way that is consistent with their professional identity, and by extension, that departments led by physician executives are less likely to exhibit comprehensiveness in strategic decision-making processes than departments led by nonphysician executives.

Originality/Value – This paper provides conceptual evidence that physicians and nonphysicians approach management differently, and introduces the utility of comprehensiveness as a construct for strategic decision making in the context of health care management.

The purpose of this study was to examine the experience of strategic-level leaders whose spiritual beliefs or practices inform their organizational decision making.

Using a phenomenological methodology, 25 executives were interviewed to understand their lived experience. All participants held executive level positions, engaged in spiritual practices at least once a week and described spirituality as important in their lives.

Thematic analysis revealed themes that pointed to the locus of spirituality in the lives of the executives (innate but not overt) and the types of decisions for which they turned to their spirituality (decisions concerning people). When facing these types of decisions, leaders described an additional step we named “executive discernment.” This additional step sought to establish a connection with the transcendent and was described as heightening their decision-making abilities, serving as a model or “North Star,” or guiding them to a decision.

This study builds on prior theoretical work and gives insight into a process not usually visible: executives' reliance on spirituality during organizational decision making. These insights highlight the potential benefits and provide specificity to the potential risks for leaders who turn to spirituality when making organizational decisions. These risks include an overconfidence in one's decision-making abilities, reliance on an authority inconsistent with organizational aims or failing to convince others of the wisdom of the chosen direction.