No description available.

Context: A relatively recent focus on evidence based management has been influenced strongly by evidence based medicine. Healthcare administrators are encouraged to utilize similar principles to optimize their decision making. There are no known studies that address whether or not and how evidence is used by healthcare administrators in decision making practice and process. Objectives: This study explores how evidence is conceptualized by public hospital executives and whether or not, and how, evidence is brought to bear on strategic decision making. Design: The study undertook a qualitative design, using a grounded theory approach. The focus was to uncover how evidence is conceptualized by decision makers, whether or not and how evidence as defined is brought to bear, and under what conditions and why evidence is brought to bear. The study included four public hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area, two academic health sciences centres and two community teaching hospitals. Hospital CEOs were asked to identify three strategic decisions (one clinical expansion, one partnership, and one decision on prioritizing quality improvement). Interviews were conducted with 19 healthcare leaders and decision makers, and content analysis was undertaken for 64 supporting documents. Results: Strategic decision makers in this study bring an amalgam of evidence to bear on strategic decisions. Evidence comes from sources internal and external to the organization, and includes a series of types of evidence ranging from published research to local business evidence. The reasons for bringing evidence to bear are highly intertwined. Evidence was sought, developed, and brought to bear on decisions in a formalized manner, and was used in concert with conditions internal and externalto the organization, and informed by the decision maker characteristics. Conclusion: Evidence plays a prominent role in strategic decision making. Strategic decisions were supported by processes requiring evidence to be brought to bear.

Context: A relatively recent focus on evidence based management has been influenced strongly by evidence based medicine. Healthcare administrators are encouraged to utilize similar principles to optimize their decision making. There are no known studies that address whether or not and how evidence is used by healthcare administrators in decision making practice and process. Objectives: This study explores how evidence is conceptualized by public hospital executives and whether or not, and how, evidence is brought to bear on strategic decision making. Design: The study undertook a qualitative design, using a grounded theory approach. The focus was to uncover how evidence is conceptualized by decision makers, whether or not and how evidence as defined is brought to bear, and under what conditions and why evidence is brought to bear. The study included four public hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area, two academic health sciences centres and two community teaching hospitals. Hospital CEOs were asked to identify three strategic decisions (one clinical expansion, one partnership, and one decision on prioritizing quality improvement). Interviews were conducted with 19 healthcare leaders and decision makers, and content analysis was undertaken for 64 supporting documents. Results: Strategic decision makers in this study bring an amalgam of evidence to bear on strategic decisions. Evidence comes from sources internal and external to the organization, and includes a series of types of evidence ranging from published research to local business evidence. The reasons for bringing evidence to bear are highly intertwined. Evidence was sought, developed, and brought to bear on decisions in a formalized manner, and was used in concert with conditions internal and externalto the organization, and informed by the decision maker characteristics. Conclusion: Evidence plays a prominent role in strategic decision making. Strategic decisions were supported by processes requiring evidence to be brought to bear.

This thesis challenges the neoclassical and the state-oriented views on economic and industrial development, using a strategic decision making theory framework and by focusing on the changing governance of the Korean water sector as an in-depth case. This research finds that a governance structure controlled by a few elites from the market or the state inevitably fails to meet the public interest. Strategic decision making theory (SDT) in this research incorporates Barzelay’s institutional processualism (Barzelay, 2003, Barzelay and Gallego, 2006) and Moe’s concept of purposive incentive (1981), in order to explain ‘changing’ governance and the reasons why some actors voluntarily participate in democratic decision making despite ‘collective action problems’. The Korean water sector, the case of this research, illustrates these ideas by showing that governance changes result from intense interaction between interested and purposive actors, critical events, and context. SDT analysis is complemented by an econometric analysis, which shows that the decentralisation of decision making power does not necessarily come with better performance unless proper governance is introduced. Solutions suggested in this thesis are democratic industrial governance and, as an intermediate means, a democratic regulatory agency, which is beyond merely (economic) regulation to remedy ‘market failure’ and economic bureaucrats pursuing long term career path.

Strategic decision-making is a fundamental process in business management as strategic decisions affect the long-term health of the organisation. However, a constantly and unpredictably changing business environment, becoming progressively more complex as time passes makes strategy formulation increasingly difficult. Shock events such as terrorist attacks, rapidly spreading communicable diseases, and unexpected business failures of large and well-established companies greatly affect organisations by making it difficult to effectively plan for the future. This thesis contributes to the strategic decision-making literature by investigating the role of shock events in a complex system, namely strategic decision-making. Using chaos/complexity theory as an intellectual platform this thesis argues that strategic decision-making is a complex, open, dynamic and non-linear system and that shock events can represent an opportunity in strategic decision-making. A number of contemporary writers are calling for more integrated models. In response this research proposes a generic and integrative framework that highlights the complexity of strategic decision-making and its processes. The research is qualitative and a single-case study approach was chosen, examining the decision-making processes in a large Australian regional airport. Data collection was triangulated, consisting mainly of in-depth interviews with executives but also included questionnaires, and quantitative and qualitative archival data. It was found that shock events influenced strategic decision-making by causing evolutionary changes in the strategic decision-making processes. In addition it was found that shock events impacted on internal drivers such as cognition and organisational culture. The shock event was perceived as an opportunity, which resulted in changing decision-making processes a change in business strategy. It was concluded that environmental perception, intuition and an opportunity-seeking culture can play an important part in strategic decision-making following a shock event.

This thesis seeks to find out which factors affect the decision to implement “lean” within manufacturing firms, and thus to build on the theory of lean implementation-driving factors. The research problem addressed, is the lack of literature regarding driver factors for lean implementation, and the potential applicability of strategic decision making (SDM) literature to the subject.   The thesis has been designed as a multiple case study of six manufacturing companies that have implemented lean, three of which are leaders in the market with longer lean experience. To gain a wider perspective on the topic, these case studies have been supplemented with an additional three pilot interviews with lean consultancy firms.                Based on our findings, this study comes to conclusions concerning the relevance that individual, organizational, and external factors have on the decision to implement lean. It also shows the influence that various factors not mentioned in previous literature have on the decision to implement lean (such as “following the trend” and organizational age). This study also reveals the dissimilarities between factors influencing strategic decision making and those influencing lean implementation, such as governmental regulations and objectives of sustainability. Finally, this paper includes suggestions for further research within the topic.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Psychological Sciences / Satoris S. Culbertson / Developing effective strategic thinkers in an organization requires a dedication to early identification, selection, development, and practice, along with the conceptual understanding and measurement tools to make it happen. In support of this, the current research focused on three objectives: 1) establishing theoretical support across multiple disciplines for the concept of a strategic thinking mindset, 2) developing the Strategic Thinking Mindset Test (STMT) using situational judgment test methodology for the U.S. Army, and 3) evaluating the results of a pilot test of the STMT for reliability and construct validity. The STMT focuses on three characteristics of a strategic mindset: Flexibility, Humility, and Inclusiveness. These characteristics were derived from themes found common to strategic thinking literature across the disciplines of psychology, management, and military science. In all stages of this research, officers and non-commissioned officers of the U.S. Army served as participants. The first three stages involve the development and keying of content for the STMT. A sample of 125 participants provided scenarios in Stage 1. In Stage 2, 75 participants gave feedback on the scenarios and provided realistic response options. In Stage 3, 224 participants rated the response options according to expression of the characteristic and effectiveness. In Stage 4, the pilot version of the STMT was administered to 229 participants, along with several other measures used to establish construct validity evidence. The results of the pilot test revealed that, although there is some evidence supporting the construct validity of the STMT as a three-factor test of flexibility, humility, and inclusiveness, the overall profile of evidence suggests that the construct(s) being measured are unclear. Low inter-item correlations contribute to a low internal consistency in the measure, which further limits the STMT’s use as a predictor. The pilot test revealed interesting results related to cognitive ability, specifically a negative relationship between the mindset and cognitive ability under best/worst response instructions, rather than a positive relationship or no relationship, as was the case under most/least likely response instructions. Future research recommendations are discussed in the areas of SJT development, scoring, format, and the further refinement and measurement of the strategic thinking mindset.

Background: The Chinese market is growing fast and rapidly in a high pace. Many foreign companies see the possibilities in this and are expanding their business to China. When operating business in China strategic decisions are taken by the management, sometimes without reflection of what influences the process. This makes the influence on the management strategic decision-making process vital when expanding to China, since it may reflect on the company’s strategic plans.   Purpose: To further explore and extend the research area on how the expansion to China influences the management and their strategic decision-making process.   Research questions: RQ1: Do the expansion to China influence the management strategic decision-making process?   RQ2: How does the expansion to China influence the management strategic decision-making process?   Methodology: Conducted as an abductive qualitative multiple case study, examined with semi-structured interviews with an exploratory purpose.   Conclusion: The empirical investigation showed that the management and their strategic decision-making process are influenced by the expansion to China. The influences are; rationality, decision speed, environment, politics, culture and how management view their strategy through the strategic lenses.

This study explores the relationship between diversity within executive decision-making teams at institutions of higher education and their propensity for strategic change. Previous research in the areas of strategic change, group decision making, and higher education was drawn from in this study. Statistically significant relationships were discovered the demographic background of executive decision-making teams at public colleges and universities, as measured by both the pursuit of new degree and certificate program offerings and multiple measures of student retention. The results also indicated the presence of an insufficiently diverse pool of potential executives for colleges and universities to draw from.

CEO competence and development is a continuing concern in the NHS. As a key feature of any CEO leadership role is responsibility for organisationally critical decisions, and there is an increasing recognition of the role context plays in effective leadership behaviour. This study examines the role of contextual intelligence in relation to PCT CEO decision making behaviour. To do this, the research addresses four questions: a) what does the literature say about CEO contextual intelligence? b) what factors do PCT CEOs say they take into account in different decision making contexts? c) what contextual factors do they actually take into account? and d) what impact do the contextual factors have on their decision making behaviour. A systematic literature review resulted in a model of CEO contextual intelligence for CEO decision making. Semi-structured interviews with 24 PCT CEOs in a NHS region about factors influencing their decisions on generic strategies, national policies, regional strategies and local plans revealed a hierarchy among contextual factors applying to different decision strata. Semi-structured interviews and analysis of CEO diaries two months later of the same focal decisions show the real critical factors to be:- national policies themselves, the Strategic Health Authority and the decision making process, for regional strategies; and Top Management Team and structure for local plans. Altogether, the research reveals that the PCT CEO’s decision making context is rationally bounded; the relevant contextual factors differed significantly from the literature derived model; the actual factors in practice differed from what were espoused; choice of factors vary depending on decision trigger strata which links to degrees of CEO autonomy; and macro level factors which were indicated as significant from the systematic review were in fact ignored in practice. A PCT CEO model of contextual intelligence is developed together with a two dimensional model of underlying structures guiding PCT CEO decision making behaviour. The findings have implications for governance structures in the NHS, CEO decision making and senior leader development in ii the NHS in the context of the 2012 Health and Social Care Act. Areas for further research in public sector, NHS and contextual intelligence are also identified.