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The purpose of this paper is to improve the understanding of the mediating role of the extensiveness of strategic planning on the relationship between slack resources and organizational performance.

The study uses empirical data gathered from 102 usable replies from private and also public hospitals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The findings indicate the existence of a positive relationship between slack resources and organizational performance and show that the extensiveness of strategic planning plays a mediating role in this relationship.

The authors highlight the exploratory nature of the study considering its unusual setting, namely, the UAE’s health care sector.

Several implications of the findings for managerial and policy practices in the UAE health care sector are discussed.

This study contributes to the existing literature on management, health care, and developing countries by examining the role of the extensiveness of strategic planning in mediating the relationship between slack resources and organizational performance in the health care industry of a developing country.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the nature and practice of strategic planning in organizations working in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Given the nature of the data, questionnaires are collected from managers only. Personal delivery and pick‐up system is used to collect the questionnaire. Sampled organizations are divided into 47 percent from the public sector and 53 percent from the private sector.

A high percentage of organizations in the sample have moved beyond daily managing and are strategically planning for the future. Surprisingly, the findings indicate that there are relatively few significant differences among the four groups included in the paper, public versus private organizations and small versus large organizations. The paper also shows that the resources required for adopting a strategic planning approach do not form a significant obstacle; and the higher the position, the more likely is participation in the strategic planning process.

This paper, which can be considered as among the first studies to report on the practice of strategic planning in the Arab region, provides us with a profile of organizations working in the UAE regarding the practice of strategic planning within them.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the knowledge of the antecedents of political behaviour. Whereas political behaviour in strategic decision-making (SDM) has received sustained interest in the literature, empirical examination of its antecedents has been meagre.

The authors conducted a constructive replication to examine the impact of three layers of context, namely, decision, firm and environment, on political behaviour. In Study 1, Greece, we gathered data on 143 strategic decisions, while in Study 2, Egypt, we collected data on 169 strategic decisions.

The evidence suggests that both decision-specific and firm factors act as antecedents to political behaviour, while environmental factors do not.

The findings support enhanced practitioner education regarding political behaviour and provide practitioners with a place from which to start by identifying the factors which might influence the occurrence of political behaviour in SDM.

The paper fills important gaps in the existing research on the influence of context on political behaviour and delineates interesting areas for further research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the influence of two aspects of firm performance: financial and business performance and organizational effectiveness, on three dimensions of the strategic decision‐making process, rationality, intuition, and political behavior.

The empirical study goes well beyond the common anecdotal observations or reflections on strategic decision‐making by utilizing a mixed‐methods approach. Based on a multi‐method field study, 286 Egyptian managers who participate in making strategic decisions are surveyed; and 36 semi‐structured interviews are conducted.

The results suggest that strategic decision‐making in high‐performing firms is more rational and less intuitive and political. Interestingly, they also show that organizational effectiveness is a stronger predictor of strategic decision‐making process dimensions than of financial and business performance.

In Egypt, a widespread suspicion of academic research adds to the frequent difficulty of obtaining completed questionnaires from more than one senior manager in a company. Moreover, because of the difficulty of collecting objective financial data, subjective measures are used to gauge performance. Further research should test the generalizability of our results in narrowly defined samples, e.g. the banking industry or the automotive industry.

The results highlight the importance of performance in strategic decision making and seem to support the “culture free” argument advancing the position that cultural differences may not have a significant impact on the influence of performance on the strategic decision‐making process.

Although scholars have posited organizational performance as an important contextual variable influencing the process of strategic decision making, this influence is not well understood or articulated, especially in the Egyptian setting. This paper contributes to filling this gap.

There are two goals of this study. First, it seeks to offer a cultural perspective with regard to the aspects of conflict in strategic decision making in Egypt. Second, it aims to examine the impact of conflict on decision effectiveness, taking into account the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty and environmental munificence.

The study is a multi method one in which both semi‐structured interviews and survey questionnaires were utilized. In total, 36 semi‐structured interviews were conducted and 135 usable questionnaires were collected from manufacturing firms. Various statistical techniques were used to validate the instrument and analyze the data.

This article offers new insights into the perception of conflict in Egypt. It also corroborates prior research in that conflict was found to significantly influence decision outcomes and strategic decision‐making process matters.

Both task and affective conflicts are treated in the context of their cultural and economic underpinnings and thus enable managers and researchers to have realistic views on the nature and impact of conflict in strategic decision making.

This article is designed to address a management concept which may be perceived differently across cultures – conflict. It also contributes to fill a gap in the strategic management literature by examining the perception of conflict and its impact on decision effectiveness considering the effects of setting and environment.

Strategy process research has made considerable progress over the last 20 years and has produced a vast body of literature. This valuable contribution, however, has not adequately examined the relationships between the characteristics of the strategy process. This study aims to fill this gap by providing evidence on the relationships between the characteristics of the process of making strategic decisions (SDs) in a new setting.

The study uses quantitative and qualitative methods.

Based on quantitative and qualitative evidence from a sample of Egyptian companies, it was found that decision makers could be simultaneously rational, political and/or intuitive.

The study recommends further research to develop new constructs of the SD making process the way in which the multi‐dimensional nature of this organic process can be considered.

The SD making process can be multi‐dimensional

The paper examines the relationships between the characteristics of the strategy process. It provides evidence on the relationships between the characteristics of the process of making strategic decisions (SDs) in a new setting.

This paper aims to develop and test an integrative model of the relationship between affective conflict and firm performance considering the control effects of four contextual variables, namely, decision motive, firm size, type of ownership and environmental hostility.

This paper focuses on empirical data gathered from the Egyptian manufacturing sector. The measures of this study enjoy a significant degree of reliability and validity.

The results suggest that affective conflict is a significant predictor of firm performance.

The most serious limitation of the study is that data on the study variables are collected from one respondent in each firm. Another important limitation is that different kinds of conflict are not examined in order to explain the different roles which they can play in strategic decision making (SDM).

The paper contributes to knowledge in the area of SDM by developing a richer model of affective conflict in a region, i.e. Africa and the Arab world, where little research can be found.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the importance of different components of strategic performance measurement systems (SPMS) and their deployment influence the use of performance information from the SPMS in making strategic decisions.

Data were collected through a survey of 143 managers of Canadian public organizations.

The findings indicate that two SPMS components, namely, the importance of non-financial performance measures and the use of operational efficiency measures, have significant positive associations with performance information use for strategy implementation and strategy assessment decisions. The extent to which SPMS models were used is found to be positively associated with performance information use for strategy implementation, but not for strategy assessment, decisions. Furthermore, the relationships between SPMS variables and strategic decision making are moderated by information systems/data limitations and management’s commitment to attaining strategic goals. Managerial skills acquired through training or experience with SPMS also contribute positively to such relationships.

The results are affected by limitations associated with the survey method used.

The findings could be useful for supporting public policy, strategic decision making, public service improvement, operational efficiency, and effectiveness.

The study contributes to public management and performance measurement literature by investigating multiple determinants of performance information use in a cross-section of Canadian public organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to employ a mixed methods design to assess the applicability, reliability and validity of Miller's scale of environmental uncertainty.

Using 759 questionnaires and eight personal interviews from three countries throughout four phases of scale assessment, the authors re‐operationalized Miller's scale to be more applicable to Arab countries. Phase 1 refines the scale with reference to the new context in which the authors applied it. Phase 2 eliminates poor performing items, using exploratory factor analysis. Phase 3 examines the generalizability of the modified scale in the Arab world. Finally, Phase 4 assesses the criterion‐related validity of the scale.

The authors' assessment of Miller's scale suggests that several changes in the scale are necessary to be more applicable in Arab countries. The results of the combined sample are consistent with the hypothetical structure of constructs and have four factors: product, competition, government and policies, and economy.

This study paid attention to the conceptualization and operationalization of strategic management research variables. Moreover, examining the Miller's scale in the Arab region could enhance the generalizability of this scale. Finally, the authors' longitudinal research, with its four samples, is another contribution.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the phenomenon of earnings management in Egypt, with particular reference to the pricing of IPOs. In addition, it aims to discuss its respondents' perceptions of the factors that are likely to weaken the effectiveness of internal corporate governance mechanisms in preventing the engagement in earnings management practices.

To achieve the objectives of this paper, a multi‐method approach was adopted. This approach includes secondary data analysis and the collection of primary data from a number of semi‐structured interviews.

The results indicate that Egyptian IPO managers have no incentive to affect the offering proceeds of their firms through exercising their discretion over the accounting accruals before going public. On the contrary, the results suggest that the amount of equity retained by issuers and the size of IPOs have a very significant impact on determining offering prices in the Egyptian stock market. The results also suggest that state‐owned enterprises are less eager to maximise their offering proceeds than privately owned companies.

The findings of this paper will be of interest to domestic and overseas investors in the Egyptian IPO market. This paper also provides many recommendations to the regulatory authorities in Egypt regarding ways to strengthen and reinforce the internal governance structure of companies.

There has so far been relatively little or no research into earnings management practices in Egypt. The multi‐cultural roots of Egyptian society make it different from other societies and hence distinguish it as a setting for our study.