Startegic Management
...USA
Cam McLarney
Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, USA
Introduction
There are perhaps as many approaches to
strategy research as there are researchers. In
this paper, we take the perspective that
organizations are social systems made up of
people, their aspirations, frustrations, egos,
and so on. Barney (1992) suggests that
``organizational behavior concepts and research
should be at the core of strategy
formulation research, as well as strategy
implementation research'' (p. 41). Nevertheless,
as Bourgeois (1984) has pointed out,
much of management literature downplays
the role played by the human agent and fails
to recognize that it is individuals who make
strategic decisions. The view of organizations
as unitary, rational decision-makers,
however, has its limitations, chief among
which is a disregard for organizational and
political processes that impact decision outcomes.
Allison's (1971) analysis of the Cuban
missile crisis is a case in point.
Humanizing the strategic decision-making
process, however, is not without its problems.
Some two decades ago, Tversky and
Kahneman (1974) discussed how people use
``heuristics'' to reduce the complexities of
decision-making. Moreover, the concept of
bounded rationality (e.g. Simon, 1976) recognizes
that humans have limited cognitive
ability, and casts doubt on the notion of the
``rational'' decision-maker who considers all
the available alternatives, weighs their advantages
and disadvantages, and makes a
decision after a comprehensive examination
of every piece of information.
Acknowledging organizations as social
systems adds another dimension to the
process of strategic decision-making: how
members of this social system view and
interpret the world around them largely
determines what decisions will be made and
how they may be implemented. A system of
shared...
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