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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.

Purpose: The purpose of the chapter is to determine the connection between organizational culture and specifics of the process of decision making in modern business systems and to determine the directions of managing the organizational culture depending on the set criteria of decision making.

Methodology: A proprietary classification of the types of organizational culture of modern business systems according to the criterion of employees' involvement into decision making is offered. This classification uses two dimensions of employees' involvement into decision making for classification of the types of organizational culture of modern business systems. First dimension: interest of business manager in involvement of employees into the process of decision making. Second dimension: employees' inclination for participation in the process of making of managerial decisions. The factors that influence these dimensions are determined.

Conclusions: Connection between organizational culture and specifics of decision making in modern business systems according to the criterion of employees' involvement in decision making is determined. The minimal level of involvement envisages independent decision making by business manager without participation of employees. In this case, a lot of problems of the business system remain unsolved and possibilities remain unused. Resource intensity of decision making is the highest, and their practical implementation is complicated by employees' dissatisfaction, but this process is conducted very quickly. The medium level of involvement envisages either collective discussion, but decision making by business manager, or collection of feedback by business manager with low interest in it from employees. In this case, resource intensity of decision making is lower, and decisions could be made and implemented faster. The highest level of involvement is connected to collective decision making by employees and business manager. This allows determining problems and using possibilities of the business system with minimal resources. Though the duration of the process of decision making is the highest, solutions are implemented quickly due to employees' support.

Originality/value: The determined specifics show the necessity for considering the influence of the organizational culture on specifics of the process of decision making in modern business systems. It is substantiated that no type of organizational culture of modern business systems according to the criterion of employees' involvement in decision making can provide a guarantee of decisions' optimality. The directions of managing the organizational culture depending on the set criteria (completeness, speed, resource intensity) of decision making are recommended.

Business ethics provide a potent source of competitive advantage, placing increasing pressure on organizations to create and maintain an ethical workforce. Nonetheless, ethical breaches continue to permeate corporate life, suggesting that there is something missing from how we conceptualize and institutionalize organizational ethics. The current effort seeks to fill this void in two ways. First, we introduce an extended ethical framework premised on sensemaking in organizations. Within this framework, we suggest that multiple individual, organizational, and societal factors may differentially influence the ethical sensemaking process. Second, we contend that human resource management plays a central role in sustaining workplace ethics and explore the strategies through which human resource personnel can work to foster an ethical culture and spearhead ethics initiatives. Future research directions applicable to scholars in both the ethics and human resources domains are provided.

Traditionally, the debate on communication value and the contribution of communication professionals to organisational decision-making has been linked to diverging roles (managers, technicians). This chapter introduces an alternative view, based on an exploratory, qualitative study of communication professionals in Finland. It focuses on the diverse ways in which these professionals contribute to organisational decision-making. The results show a rich, constantly developing picture of communication practices, which challenges the traditional dichotomy of manager and technician roles.

Although there has been increasing interest in the role of affect in work settings, the impact of moods and emotions in strategic decision making remains largely unexplored. In this essay, we address this shortcoming by proposing a conceptual model of strategic decision making that incorporates, at its core, the impact of affective states on cognitive processes that are integral to the decision outcome. The model is based on the principles of Affective Events Theory, which holds that environmental exigencies generate “affective events” that cause emotional reactions in organizational members which, in turn, determine members’ attitudes and behaviors. We extend this model to include the effect of the extra-organizational environment, and propose that emotions “infuse” those cognitive processes that are critical to the strategic decision making process. We conclude that strategic decision making in organizations is not always a controlled, deliberate, purely cognitive process, as it is often described. Rather, we contend that the moods and emotions that managers experience in response to positive and negative workplace events have a significant affect on strategic decision-making processes and ultimately, organizational-level outcomes. We discuss the implications of our model for theory, research, and practice.

How do organizations respond to negative feedback regarding their innovation activities? In this chapter, the authors reconcile contradictory predictions stemming from behavioral learning and from the escalation of commitment (EoC) perspectives regarding persistence under negative performance feedback. The authors core argument suggests that the seemingly contradictory psychological processes indicated by these two perspectives occur simultaneously in decision makers but that the design of organizational roles and reward systems affects their prevalence in decision-making tasks. Specifically, the authors argue that for decision makers responsible for an individual project, responses given to negative performance feedback regarding a project are dominated by self-justification and loss-avoidance mechanisms predicted by the EoC literature, while for decision makers responsible for a portfolio of projects, responses to negative performance regarding a project are dominated by an under-sampling of poorly performing alternatives that behavioral learning theory predicts. In addition to assigning decision-making authority to different organizational roles, organizational designers shape the strength of these mechanisms through the design of reward systems and specifically by setting more or less ambiguous goals, aspiration levels, time horizons of incentives provided, and levels of failure tolerance.

This paper illuminates the distinction between individual and organizational actors in business-to-business markets as well as the coexistence of formal and informal mechanisms of coordination in multinational corporations. The main questions addressed include the following. (1) What factors influence the occurrence of personal contacts of foreign subsidiary managers in industrial multinational corporations? (2) How such personal contacts enable coordination in industrial markets and within multinational firms? The theoretical context of the paper is based on: (1) the interaction approach to industrial markets, (2) the network approach to industrial markets, and (3) the process approach to multinational management. The unit of analysis is the foreign subsidiary manager as the focal actor of a contact network. The paper is empirically focused on Portuguese sales subsidiaries of Finnish multinational corporations, which are managed by either a parent country national (Finnish), a host country national (Portuguese) or a third country national. The paper suggests eight scenarios of individual dependence and uncertainty, which are determined by individual, organizational, and/or market factors. Such scenarios are, in turn, thought to require personal contacts with specific functions. The paper suggests eight interpersonal roles of foreign subsidiary managers, by which the functions of their personal contacts enable inter-firm coordination in industrial markets. In addition, the paper suggests eight propositions on how the functions of their personal contacts enable centralization, formalization, socialization and horizontal communication in multinational corporations.

Organization development is focused on implementing a planned process of positive humanistic change in organizations through the use of social science theory, action research, and data-based feedback methods. The role of personality in that change process, however, has historically been ignored or relegated to a limited set of interventions. The purpose of this chapter is to provide a conceptual overview of the linkages between personality and OD, discuss the current state of personality in the field including key trends in talent management, and offer a new multi-level framework for conceptualizing applications of personality for different types of OD efforts. The chapter concludes with implications for research and practice.

This chapter proposes that organizational strategy formation should be characterized theoretically as a process that is subject to several interacting forces, rather than represented by separate discrete decision-models or theoretic perspectives, as is commonly done in the strategic management literature. Based on an extensive review of relevant theory and empirical work in strategic decision-making, organizational change theory, cognitive and social psychology, and strategy processes, seven kinds of “forces” – rational, imposed, teleological, learning, political, heuristic, and social – are identified as interacting in and having significant influence on the strategy formation process. It is further argued that by applying a holistic “forces-view” of the significant and interacting influences on strategy formation, we can better understand the dynamics and challenges in managing the process of defining and changing organizational strategies.