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The purpose of this article is to extend and reinforce previous research intended to demonstrate that a process model of decision making is conducive to strategic decision success. Using a strategic decision matrix with a two‐dimensional focus, 16 high‐visibility strategic decisions from different corporations in the 1990s are evaluated and classified to support the hypothesis that a formal decision‐making process is conducive to successful strategic decision outcomes. The results of this evaluation clearly indicate that, in the absence of a managerial decision‐making process, successful outcomes are unlikely to materialize. Conversely, although a process‐oriented approach to strategic choice affords no guarantee of a successful outcome, the likelihood of this occurrence tends to increase with this approach. This revisiting of strategic decision success confirms earlier research in this critical area. Hopefully, it will elicit subsequent research of a similar nature.

Takes the view that managerial decisions are made in a diversity of organizational settings which can best be explained and evaluated in the context of conceptual interdisciplinary decision‐making models, and that such models constitute an appropriate vehicle for explaining the eclectic aspects of managerial decision making in all types of formal organization. Presents a typology of conceptual decision‐making models and evaluates their similarities and differences along with their respective efficacies in various managerial decision‐making contexts. Advances the process model of managerial decision making as the ideal choice for decisions which have significant long‐term consequences for the whole organization.

The primary purpose is to present empirical measures of variables relating to practices engaged in by site‐based teams, and then to use these variables to test a model predicting significant outcomes of site‐based decision making. The practice variables of site‐based management (SBM) teams are essential in promoting research within a distributed leadership framework.

A path model is computed to test the relationships between factors relating to the support received by site‐based teams; site team communication and decision‐making practice, and perceived outcomes of SBM. Measures are based on survey data collected from 367 team members in 50 schools from fifteen school districts in a northeastern state in the US.

Results show that different factors relating to the support provided to site‐based teams and practices employed by these teams emerge as statistically significant predictors of various outcomes. Results suggest that the resources provided to support site teams, e.g. the devolution of decision‐making power, results in enhanced stakeholder influence, but whether this influence results in better decisions or improvement in teaching and learning depends on the communication and decision‐making practices site teams employ within a distributed leadership framework.

This study sought to identify site team decision making and communication processes that reflect how site teams conduct their work, defining how members of site teams perceive the “rules of the game.” In doing so, it offers a new and different perspective on how such processes impact outcomes associated with shared decision‐making processes, and thus a better understanding of the complex dynamics of school‐site decision making and the distribution of leadership in schools.

Hype about information and communication technology (ICT) emphasizes potential positive outcomes; while enabling factors are under‐emphasized and potential negative outcomes are excluded. The purpose of this paper is to broaden the framing of ICT to include enabling factors and potential negative outcomes.

The paper takes the form of a critical realist study. Critical realist research seeks to improve understanding of causal mechanisms and causal contexts.

Comprehensive enablers for decision making include balanced unambiguous information; specific trustworthy communication; quiet sufficient decision spaces; and independent engaged decision makers. The introduction of a new ICT can make a contribution to, and/or detract from, realization of these principal enabling factors.

In this paper ICT is positioned within a preliminary comprehensive framing of enabling factors for decision making. ICT is used for other purposes. Nonetheless, the positioning of ICT in a preliminary comprehensive framing for decision making support reveals how hype about ICT can be mediated by consideration of enabling factors and potential negative outcomes.

The broader framing of enabling factors can provide a starting point for managers to undertake comprehensive improvement of information, communication, and contexts for decision making.

The originality of this paper is that it applies critical realism to mediate hype about ICTs that could be used to support decision making. The value of this paper is that it provides a detailed description of inter‐related factors that need to be managed in decision making support.

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.

This paper investigates how individuals' decision-making approach and perceptions of a game's cognitive realism affect the performance of virtual businesses in a web-based simulation game.

Survey data are collected from 274 business simulation game users and is analysed using the fsQCA technique.

The study identifies three alternative pathways to high and low performance in a business simulation game. Results indicate that a flexible decision-making approach exists in all high performance pathway solutions. Where a game is perceived to be realistic, a more focused decision-making approach is associated with high performance. However, where perceived cognitive realism is absent, a less focused experimental decision-making approach is employed, which increases the chances to achieve low performance. Finally, perceived cognitive realism and an experimental decision-making approach are found to be mutually exclusive for achieving high performance.

Whilst the learning benefits of web-based simulation games are widely acknowledged, the complex interplay amongst factors affecting performance in games is under-researched. Limited research exists on how perceptions of a game's cognitive realism interact with user decision-making approaches to affect performance.

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.

A large body of research has analyzed individual psychological characteristics as antecedents of strategic decision-making. However, this research has mainly focused on trait-based characteristics that explain impaired strategic decision outcomes. Recently, PsyCap has been proposed as an alternative driver of strategic decision outcomes that, in contrast to other drivers, can be influenced by management.

Drawing on research on psychological capital (PsyCap), a psychological construct conceptualized as a state-like individual strength that is malleable, the authors argue that PsyCap exerts an inverted curvilinear effect on strategic decision outcomes. The authors use a computerized strategic decision simulation involving 102 managers to empirically test our hypotheses.

The authors show that PsyCap improves strategic decision outcomes up to an inflection point, after which it negatively affects those outcomes. The authors also show that this effect is mediated by heuristic information processing.

For the empirical study the authors relied on a sample of 102 practicing managers from the financial services industry in Germany.

PsyCap has been shown to be malleable through, for instance, micro-interventions and dedicated web-based trainings. Therefore, depending on managers' PsyCap levels, either further increases in PsyCap or a regulation of this characteristic might be appropriate in order to optimize strategic decision outcomes.

As a state-like individual strength that is malleable, PsyCap might serve as a management characteristic that is particularly important in challenging situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper contributes to research on strategic decision making by introducing PsyCap as an important antecedent of strategic decision outcomes that – in contrast to other individual characteristics – is state-like and, hence, malleable.

Strategic decision importance has rarely been investigated as a decision-specific characteristic in the strategic decision-making process (SDMP) literature taking into consideration information management while taking important strategic decisions. Here, the ability of decision importance to predict decision effectiveness as an outcome of SDMPs in higher education institutions (HEIs) is examined in the context of Bahrain.

A conceptual model is developed relating decision importance to decision effectiveness indirectly via the SDMP characteristics intuition, rationality and decentralization. Data from a cross-sectional questionnaire completed by leaders of HEIs and academics involved in strategic decision-making in Bahrain are used to test the model and hypotheses via correlation analysis. The paper also considers a literature review of the use of information management while taking a strategic decision.

Decision importance is shown to positively influence decision effectiveness in Bahraini HEIs mediated by rationality and by decentralization in decision-making, although negative effects of decentralization are also demonstrated. However, decision importance does not influence decision effectiveness mediated by intuition.

Due to the small sample size, the results cannot be generalized to contexts beyond HEIs in Bahrain. Additional SDMP characteristics of significance in the context of HEIs could be future investigated, for instance, political behaviour and lateral communication, are not included in the model. Future research exploring the latter two aspects could provide deeper insight into the findings.

The findings of this paper could be considered by HEIs senior management and members of the governing body while strategic decision-making, which could be at different levels, including strategic planning or assessing a strategic decision in terms of effectiveness. This paper will also provide insight one the use of information while considering strategic decision-making.

A model leading for effective strategic decision-making could be used by leaders of HEIs and regulators including licensing bodies and QA agencies to set standards for HEIs for sustainable performance and quality education in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Initiative. Strategic decision-making will have an impact on the overall performance of HEIs and serve all relevant stakeholder’s including parents, students, employers and industry.

Little research conducted in relation to strategic decision-making in the Gulf Cooperation Council therefore, this research will add original findings and the outcome of this study will lead to future research related to SDMP and the use of information management in the overall strategic decision-making.

Decision making is inherently stressful since the decision maker must choose between potentially conflicting alternatives with unique hazards and uncertain outcomes. Whereas decision aids such as decision support systems (DSS) can be beneficial in stressful scenarios, decision makers sometimes misuse them during decision making, leading to suboptimal outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between stress, decision making and decision aid use.

The authors conduct an extensive multi-disciplinary review of decision making and DSS use through the lens of stress and examine how stress, as perceived by decision makers, impacts their use or misuse of DSS even when such aids can improve decision quality. Research questions examine underlying sources of stress in managerial decision making that influence decision quality, relationships between a decision maker’s perception of stress, DSS use/misuse, and decision quality, and implications for research and practice on DSS design and capabilities.

The study presents a conceptual model that provides an integrative behavioral view of the impact of a decision maker’s perceived stress on their use of a DSS and the quality of their decisions. The authors identify critical knowledge gaps and propose a research agenda to improve decision quality and use of DSS by considering a decision maker’s perceived stress.

This study provides a previously unexplored view of DSS use and misuse as shaped by the decision and job stress experienced by decision makers. Through the application of four theories, the review and its findings highlight key design principles that can mitigate the negative effects of stressors on DSS use.