Corporations nowadays are in a highly accelerated stage, facing an ever-changing environment. It is no longer accomplishable by a one-man team to survive and prosper in such competitive environment. Hambrick & Mason¡¦s upper echelons theory points out that the top management team (TMT) is an organization¡¦s main decision maker, not individuals. The follow-up researches mostly focus on the relationship between TMT and organizational performance, but lack info on the construction of a TMT and its associated operations. It is therefore this research directs its focus towards how, when today¡¦s corporations start to adopt the TMT theory into their strategy, the number of team members, the selection process, member criteria, and the roles and responsibilities, are decided, and what elements will affect the conflicting communication and decision making process. This research is composed by case studies, and the following is a qualitative analysis conclusion of interviews with six corporations and seven senior managers: 1. There is a close-bonding relationship between the construction of TMT and corporation structure, managerial cognition, and corporation size. Mid-level and small corporations usually base their TMT selection on subjective decisions of the owners, while large corporations base TMT selections on protocols, through set channels such as recruitment or promotion. 2. TMT operation is related to corporation structure and owner¡¦s control. The role of TMT on major decision making depends on the owner¡¦s degree of empowerment. Communication between team members tend to be face-to-face communication, and senior management usually see positive conflicts to be of beneficiary value to the organization, while negative conflicts would be controlled under rules and protocols. It is therefore positive conflicts are not avoided, and actually encouraged, to increase innovation in the organization.

Classical decision-making theory suggests that decisions made by an individual or a team of decision makers should lead to the same performance outcome. Conversely, behavioral decision-making theory argues that decisions made by teams result in superior micro or macro forecasts and performance outcomes. Our tests using mutual funds support the classical decision-making theory. The empirical results are time invariant and robust with respect to the selected index or model specification.

This qualitative study was conducted with participation from social workers employed at a Southern California child welfare agency and researched whether the use of Child/Family Team-Decision Making meetings were a benefit to social workers’ practice. Furthermore, the study examined social workers’ beliefs about the meetings’ impact on foster children and their families in connection with the outcomes of safety, permanence and well-being. Safety, permanence and well-being are the three domains used to evaluate the success of foster children and their families. Family team-decision making meetings have the common goals of safety, permanence and well-being through promoting shared decision-making, empowerment and continued relationships between workers and the families they serve. The 10 participants of this study were recruited by the researcher through self- knowledge of employees and their job function. Data was gathered through in-person interviews with participants as well as the participants they referred. The data in this study was qualitative and was gathered in two phases then recorded and analyzed using open coding followed by axial coding. The findings of this study revealed that including all of the people who are affected by the decisions made in these meetings is essential to good child welfare social work practice. Concepts such as engagement, group and community cooperation and dynamics, social worker training and knowledge and agency support were themes that permeated throughout the data. These themes were intertwined with foster child safety, permanence and well-being. This study also concluded that attending and participating in CFTDMs enhances a social worker’s knowledge base and assists in their feelings of competence and confidence in their job performance.

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Recent studies find that mutual funds exhibit differential and persistent performance which is frequently attributed to superior managerial decision making. We extend the literature by examining the impact of the fund's management structure on performance outcomes. Specifically, we examine directly whether superior outcomes, in terms of risk-adjusted returns, may be explained by behavioral decision making theory that asserts that teams make better decisions than individuals. Empirical results are consistent with the classical decision making theory and the efficient market hypothesis.

The management style being used by school personnel in Texas and across the nation today is predominately that of a bureaucracy. This model was organized around the industrial revolution that was exercising authority at the turn of the century. Writers and researchers have pointed out that such a model is not capable of providing students the knowledge and skills they will need to enter an increasingly demanding society. One management style relatively new to the educational arena today is that of Total Quality Management. This study reports the results of the impact of the training in those principles by measurement of student test scores.

Este estudo investiga a dinâmica do processo decisório conduzido por equipes ao longo do tempo e em ambientes com distintas latitudes de ação. A elaboração deste estudo contou com uma revisão teórica sobre modelos integrados para análise do processo decisório estratégico; o processo decisório conduzido por equipes e o uso do simulador de negócios Markstrat em pesquisas no campo da administração. Partindo da fundamentação teórica, propõe um modelo temporal-ambiental para o teste da efetiva participação das equipes de gestão na busca por melhores resultados organizacionais. A metodologia consistiu em um levantamento de dados sobre o perfil das equipes (conhecimento prévio em administração de empresas e grau de propensão ao risco), da qualidade dos processos episódicos (processo de transição, ação e interpessoal) e dos resultados (valor das ações das empresas) ao longo de dois momentos da gestão, denominados como episódios de gestão. As 89 equipes deste estudo, distribuídas em 17 indústrias, compostas por um total de 442 gestores, são formadas por estudantes do último ano de um curso de Administração, em São Paulo, na disciplina semestral Jogos de Empresas, entre fevereiro/2008 e junho/2009. Utilizou-se a modelagem de equações estruturais via partial least squares como técnica de estatística multivariada para a avaliação quantitativa do modelo temporal-ambiental. Como principais resultados, verificaram-se diferentes relações de causa e efeito entre os perfis das equipes e seus processos nos resultados ao longo do tempo de gestão sob diferentes condições ambientais. A principal contribuição deste estudo consiste no avanço do estudo integrativo sobre o processo decisório estratégico conduzido por equipes, por meio da análise da influência temporal da latitude de ação sobre a dinâmica decisória. / This piece of work investigates into the dynamics of the decision-making process undertaken by teams within a certain timeframe and within environments with distinct latitudes of action. The design of this study includes a literature review on integrated models for the strategic decision-making process analysis, the decision-making process undertaken by teams and the application of the business simulator Markstrat in the field of management research. From the theoretical foundation on, it builds a time-environment model for the testing of the effective participation of the management teams to seek better organizational results. The methodology involves data gathering on the profile of the teams (previous management knowledge and risk-taking degree), on the quality of the episodic processes (transiction, action and interpersonal process) and on the results (stock value of the companies) over two specific moments of the management activity known as management episodes. The total of 442 managers who originated 89 teams divided into 17 industry sectors are undergraduates from the last year of the Business Administration program in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, enrolled in the semester-long course of Business Games, between February of 2008 and June of 2009. This research applied structural modeling via partial least squares as the multivariate statistics technique for the quantitative evaluation of the time-environment model. The main results referred to different cause-effect relations amongst the profile of the teams and their processes upon the results over the management timeframe under different environmental conditions. The most relevant contribution of this piece of work is the advancement of the integrative study about the strategic decision-making process undertaken by teams via the analysis of temporal influence by the latitude of action over the decisionmaking dynamics.

Este estudo investiga a dinâmica do processo decisório conduzido por equipes ao longo do tempo e em ambientes com distintas latitudes de ação. A elaboração deste estudo contou com uma revisão teórica sobre modelos integrados para análise do processo decisório estratégico; o processo decisório conduzido por equipes e o uso do simulador de negócios Markstrat em pesquisas no campo da administração. Partindo da fundamentação teórica, propõe um modelo temporal-ambiental para o teste da efetiva participação das equipes de gestão na busca por melhores resultados organizacionais. A metodologia consistiu em um levantamento de dados sobre o perfil das equipes (conhecimento prévio em administração de empresas e grau de propensão ao risco), da qualidade dos processos episódicos (processo de transição, ação e interpessoal) e dos resultados (valor das ações das empresas) ao longo de dois momentos da gestão, denominados como episódios de gestão. As 89 equipes deste estudo, distribuídas em 17 indústrias, compostas por um total de 442 gestores, são formadas por estudantes do último ano de um curso de Administração, em São Paulo, na disciplina semestral Jogos de Empresas, entre fevereiro/2008 e junho/2009. Utilizou-se a modelagem de equações estruturais via partial least squares como técnica de estatística multivariada para a avaliação quantitativa do modelo temporal-ambiental. Como principais resultados, verificaram-se diferentes relações de causa e efeito entre os perfis das equipes e seus processos nos resultados ao longo do tempo de gestão sob diferentes condições ambientais. A principal contribuição deste estudo consiste no avanço do estudo integrativo sobre o processo decisório estratégico conduzido por equipes, por meio da análise da influência temporal da latitude de ação sobre a dinâmica decisória. / This piece of work investigates into the dynamics of the decision-making process undertaken by teams within a certain timeframe and within environments with distinct latitudes of action. The design of this study includes a literature review on integrated models for the strategic decision-making process analysis, the decision-making process undertaken by teams and the application of the business simulator Markstrat in the field of management research. From the theoretical foundation on, it builds a time-environment model for the testing of the effective participation of the management teams to seek better organizational results. The methodology involves data gathering on the profile of the teams (previous management knowledge and risk-taking degree), on the quality of the episodic processes (transiction, action and interpersonal process) and on the results (stock value of the companies) over two specific moments of the management activity known as management episodes. The total of 442 managers who originated 89 teams divided into 17 industry sectors are undergraduates from the last year of the Business Administration program in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, enrolled in the semester-long course of Business Games, between February of 2008 and June of 2009. This research applied structural modeling via partial least squares as the multivariate statistics technique for the quantitative evaluation of the time-environment model. The main results referred to different cause-effect relations amongst the profile of the teams and their processes upon the results over the management timeframe under different environmental conditions. The most relevant contribution of this piece of work is the advancement of the integrative study about the strategic decision-making process undertaken by teams via the analysis of temporal influence by the latitude of action over the decisionmaking dynamics.