<p>The main purpose of this research is to use Hermeneutic research approach to find out how Decision Support System (DSS) is used in banks and financial services. The research started from one stance, from which the further process could be extended to reach more complete picture of Decision Support System’s usage in strategic decision makings in banks. The research is also trying to find out the drawbacks and benefits of the DSS which have been used nowadays in banks. Furthermore, the future improvements of using DSS to make better decisions related with moral and different environments are also being discussed in the research findings.</p><p>During the primary data collection, resources from different channels have been used to support the research. The primary data sources include lectures and discussion in three banks’ visiting opportunities in Stockholm, Sweden, one interview with IT Vice president from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, New York, two interviews with a professor and a director respectively from Lund University and Financial Services Innovation Centre in University College Cork, Ireland.</p><p>Experiences from both academic and practical have been shared to strength the research’s validity and trustworthiness. Hermeneutic research approach addresses through the whole research process which needs to be open-minded and flexible.</p><p>Unawareness of DSS for people who are working in banks is one of the issues today. Different embedded models regarding various functions are not so clear to bank staff; thus there is a gap between human decisions and system decisions. There is a variation of requirements between central banks, retail banks, commercial banks, investment banks. Hence there should be a differentiation when implementing a system. Banking systems are widespread systems which are influenced by environment factors, political, economic, socio-cultural and technological variables.</p>

Researchers have increasingly directed attention to the importance of emotions in decision making. Recent theories have focused on the interpersonal effects of emotions--the influence of the decision maker's expressed emotions on observers' decisions and judgments. In the current research, we examine people's expectations of how incidental, discrete emotions affect behavior. We also study how these expectations affect decisions in interactive settings, and contrast them with how emotions actually impact other people's behavior.These ideas were tested in four studies. In Study 1a, participants (N = 58) answered a questionnaire asking their perceptions of how different emotions affect behavior. In Study 1b, participants (N = 203) read a number of hypothetical scenarios in which different interactions between them and another person took place. Studies 2 (N = 98) and 3 (N = 132) were two economic games -- a Stag-Hunt game and a Trust Game -- involving decisions with non-trivial financial consequences.Across these four studies, I found that people do have strong beliefs about how incidental emotions affect behaviors. Because of these beliefs, when told about their counterparts' emotional state, people in interactive settings modify their behavior. The impact of people's beliefs on behavior, however, was more consistent for negative emotions such as anger and fear, than for positive emotions such as happiness and gratitude. These findings also indicate that people are sensitive to the different effects of different emotions: different negative emotions such as guilt and anger have different effects on their expectations. Finally, I found that people's expectations about how their counterparts' emotions affect behavior can be inaccurate in specific settings.

TransCanada Corporation has proposed the Keystone XL pipeline project to transfer crude bitumen from the oil sand fields in northern Alberta, Canada, to oil refineries located in the southern part of the United States. This project has created controversy at the national level in the US and Canada and at the international level. The existence of various stakeholders with differing wants and needs has embroiled the Keystone XL in a complicated strategic dispute. This dispute was initially ignited by the potential project’s negative environmental impacts. However, economic and political issues have also played a critical role in further complicating the decision process. The objective of this study is to design a strategic decision-making system for use in assessing the Keystone XL conflict with standard and perceptual graph model methods. Standard graph model analysis consists of various steps. After identifying the decision makers (DMs) subjectively, their options and preferences are determined. Then, possible scenarios or combinations of options for these DMs are evaluated. In the next step, based on rules called solution concepts, a standard stability analysis is conducted. The perceptual graph model technique, on the other hand, considers the emotions and perceptions of DMs in a conflict to assess the existing dynamics among them. Although this technique takes its basic structure from the standard graph model technique, it presents unique insights into each DM’s perspectives toward the conflict and other DMs. This technique has been used in this study to understand how the awareness of one DM regarding other DMs’ perceptions can change reactions and strategies under different conditions regarding the Keystone XL conflict.

The demand for forensic social work as a specialist field is increasing rapidly, due to the increasing moral decline of the community and consequent higher demands set to generic social workers. Amendments to existing acts as well as the development of new legislation, lead to more opportunity for the prosecution of the perpetrator, and therefore a higher utilization of the forensic social worker. A need was experienced to do research regarding the gaps experienced by social workers or any other workers who are currently executing forensic assessments with the sexually traumatised child. The aim of the investigation was to determine which gaps social workers experience in the field when assessing a child forensically. A recording procedure was used to obtain qualitative as well as quantitative data. A purposive sampling was used were interviews were held with five participants to obtain the data. A selfdeveloped questionnaire was used as measuring instrument. It is clear from the findings that there are definite gaps within the field of forensic social work and the need of further research within the field of forensic social work in South Africa is highlighted. / Thesis (MIng (Mechanical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

The demand for forensic social work as a specialist field is increasing rapidly, due to the increasing moral decline of the community and consequent higher demands set to generic social workers. Amendments to existing acts as well as the development of new legislation, lead to more opportunity for the prosecution of the perpetrator, and therefore a higher utilization of the forensic social worker. A need was experienced to do research regarding the gaps experienced by social workers or any other workers who are currently executing forensic assessments with the sexually traumatised child. The aim of the investigation was to determine which gaps social workers experience in the field when assessing a child forensically. A recording procedure was used to obtain qualitative as well as quantitative data. A purposive sampling was used were interviews were held with five participants to obtain the data. A selfdeveloped questionnaire was used as measuring instrument. It is clear from the findings that there are definite gaps within the field of forensic social work and the need of further research within the field of forensic social work in South Africa is highlighted. / Thesis (MIng (Mechanical Engineering))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012.

Although there has been rich research conducted into the interrelated issues and factors among change management (ChM), knowledge management (KM) and project management (PM), most existing studies attempt to understand the role of KM in ChM and PM in general. Given the fundamental role played by KM in supporting IT project-oriented change management, the topics of knowledge networks and mobilisation across knowledge boundaries are relatively unexplored. Recent developments in KM have heightened the need for more understanding on four main issues: 1) insufficient knowledge traceability based on the relationships between knowledge elements and key factors; 2) most decision issues in PM are related to uncertainty, complexity and implicit ambiguity, particularly with regard to systematics and interrelatedness within project decisions; 3) lack of procedural knowledge to provide strategic direction for managing multiple IT projects; 4) lack of ‘lessons learnt’ documentation in knowledge bases. To address these issues, this research attempts to analyse KM, ChM and IT project management from a more integrated perspective, and investigates the development of a change management knowledge network model (CMKNM) in IT projects to facilitate knowledge mobilisation across organizational boundaries. The study employs a practice-based perspective by adopting both deductive and inductive approaches using an exploratory case study strategy. Empirical data were collected from semistructured interviews and company documents. A combination of thematic analysis and comparative analysis has been employed to analyse the data collected across seven public organisations, private organisations, and international companies. Results are obtained from the empirical study on the key factors influencing knowledge mobilisation in IT projectoriented change management, knowledge networks and connections. The results identified organisational factors and their influence on knowledge channels and knowledge networks. The CMKNM allows key knowledge mobilisation factors to be aligned with each other. Connections between knowledge networks allow knowledge to be mobilised by tracing knowledge channels to support ChM decisions. The study contributes to organisational and KM theories regarding organizational strategy, organisational culture, organizational capacity, knowledge network externalities, knowledge network intermediaries, and knowledge network infrastructure.

A decisão estratégica é tipicamente não estruturada, no sentido de que não existe processo semelhante na memória da organização. Essa estruturação corresponde ao cenário exposto de forma clara, com suas questões, hipóteses e objetivos. A qualidade da decisão estratégica depende principalmente do processo e da competência daqueles que participam dela. Gerar alternativas criativas e viáveis é uma etapa fundamental do processo de tomada de decisão, responsável em grande parte pela qualidade almejada. Entretanto, as pesquisas sobre geração de alternativas têm indicado consistentemente que as pessoas não são eficientes nessa atividade. Buscando-se as explicações para esse fato surgiram lacunas na literatura que serviram de inspiração para o presente estudo. Qual a influência das heurísticas e da isolação entre as etapas convergente e divergente na geração de alternativas? Para explorar essas lacunas e conhecer o desempenho do administrador brasileiro ao gerar alternativas foi realizado um experimento com 174 alunos de cursos MBA, de 4 escolas da Grande São Paulo. O resultado desse experimento propiciou algumas conclusões interessantes como a confirmação do baixo desempenho em geração de alternativas. O desafio para preencher as lacunas observadas permanece e as hipóteses da pesquisa, relacionando as heurísticas e a isolação como fatores que influenciam o desempenho, não foram aceitas. O estudo é uma confluência da pesquisa experimental, oriunda da psicologia cognitiva da decisão, com a visão da ciência da decisão organizacional. Essa linha de pesquisa se mostrou praticamente inexplorada nos estudos em administração desenvolvidos no Brasil. / The strategic decision-making is typically non-structured because there is no similarity process in the memory of the organizations. This structural model would involve a context of elements such as questions, hypotheses and objectives exposed in a quite clear way. The quality of the strategic decision-making depends mainly on its own process and on the competence of the individuals involved. An essential part of the making decision process is to generate creative and viable options that are also responsible for the quality of the process. However, researches on option-generating procedures have consistently suggested that people are not efficient in this kind of task. The present study was inspired by the fact that the current literature lacks studies explaining the reasons why this happen. What is the influence of the heuristics and isolation strategies on the convergent and divergent phases for generating options? In order to investigate this issue and understand the performance of the Brazilian managers for generating options, an experiment was conduct in 174 individuals studying in MBA courses at 4 educational institutions in the urban city area of São Paulo. The results led to some interesting conclusions such as the confirmation of the poor performance for generating options. The challenge and the lack remain mainly because the hypotheses tested, i.e., the heuristic and isolation strategies for generating options, were not effective. The present study is a confluence of two different decision approaches: the experimental research (based on cognitive psychology) and the management science. This line of research hasn’t been explored in the management field in Brazil.

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.

Product innovation is a key driver of any company’s growth. The biggest challenge in managing product innovation is in determining the most promising new product development (NPD) projects from the many ideas generated, known as portfolio management. In practice, NPD portfolio management still bears some problematic issues, including focusing mainly on portfolio selection rather than managing the entire process, the vague links between the process and business strategy, and a lack of formal process. Therefore, a study that looks at NPD portfolio management through different perspectives is required. NPD portfolio management deals with dynamic decision-making processes, involving not only selection decisions, but also decisions to delay, continue or even terminate projects. To understand this integrative process, a systematic literature review that explored four knowledge domains, i.e., NPD portfolio management, decision- making, strategy and organisational routines, was carried out. It involved 40 articles published from 1981-2012. The review focused on revealing how decision-making processes in NPD portfolio management are conducted and how they relate to the strategy process and organisational routines. The key findings show that decisions in the NPD portfolio management process are made through interaction between cognitive and political factors, overlooking the organisational factors in the process. Furthermore, the extant literature does not explicitly explain how to link the NPD portfolio management process to the strategy process. Also, the findings indicate that the concept of organisational routines had not been used when investigating NPD portfolio management. These are the research gaps that led to the three research questions: 1) How are organisational factors involved with the cognitive and political factors in the decision-making processes in NPD portfolio management?; 2) How do the decision-making processes in NPD portfolio management link to the business strategy?; and 3) To what extent are organisational routines related to the decision-making processes in NPD portfolio management?

Data quality is an important aspect of an organisation’s strategies for supporting decision makers in reaching the best decisions possible and consequently attaining the organisation’s objectives. In the case of public organisations, decisions ultimately concern the public and hence further diligence is required to make sure that these decisions do, for instance, preserve economic resources, maintain public health, and provide national security. The decision making process requires a wealth of information in order to achieve efficient results. Public organisations typically acquire great amounts of data generated by public services. However, the vast amount of data stored in public organisations’ databases may be one of the main reasons for inefficient decisions made by public organisations. Processing vast amounts of data and extracting accurate information are not easy tasks. Although technology helps in this respect, for example, the use of decision support systems, it is not sufficient for improving decisions to a significant level of assurance. The research proposed using data mining to improve results obtained by decision support systems. However, more considerations are needed than the mere technological aspects. The research argues that a complete data quality framework is needed in order to improve data quality and consequently the decision making process in public organisations. A series of surveys conducted in seven public organisations in Abu Dhabi Emirate of the United Arab Emirates contributed to the design of a data quality framework. The framework comprises elements found necessary to attain the quality of data reaching decision makers. The framework comprises seven elements ranging from technical to human-based found important to attain data quality in public organisations taking Abu Dhabi public organisations as the case. The interaction and integration of these elements contributes to the quality of data reaching decision makers and hence to the efficiency of decisions made by public organisations. The framework suggests that public organisations may need to adopt a methodological basis to support the decision making process. This includes more training courses and supportive bodies of the organisational units, such as decision support centres, information security and strategic management. The framework also underscores the importance of acknowledging human and cultural factors involved in the decision making process. Such factors have implications for how training and raising awareness are implemented to lead to effective methods of system development.