HELSINGIN KAUPPAKORKEAKOULU HELSINKI SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS Behavioral Aspects

HELSINGIN KAUPPAKORKEAKOULU HELSINKI SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS Behavioral Aspects in Decision Making Leena Tanner Decision Support Methods for Strategic Decision Making Ilkka Haapalinna & Sari Stenfors & Leena Tanner Potential readers: ‘strategic’ management, consultants and researchers

Our primary goal is to support deliberate strategy making l Strategy is the logic that governs the choices of a company among all its decision options. l The strategic decision-making process may vary in time and scope. l Our aim is to analyse the usefulness of the formal decision support in the strategic decision-making process.

Problems in analysis of formal methods for strategic decision support in business l Strategic decision-making is a complex process with many stakeholders. l Strategic decision involves creation, change or retention of a strategy. l Essence of strategy development is creativity and dialogue. l Certain tools are used but mainstream strategy literature does not acknowledge decision support methods.

Reasons for the study & our main ideas Little research has been done to survey a methodologically wide range of potential support systems for strategic decisions in businesses yet! l Which existing formal “support methods” offer potential gains in the process of strategic decision-making? l Our intentions are: l To examine an extensive array of formal and systematic methods that could be used to aid strategic decision-making, and l to describe their characteristics and problem type suitability. l To consider the methods problem-oriented. l

Current state of our research l Literature review l Well over 60 articles of different methods and approaches l Methods in use in Finnish companies (a questionnaire) l New ideas: l Use of multi-methodology in decision-making processes (hard & soft, quantitative & qualitative, . . ) l Not only Material World matters! Both Personal World and Social World should also be regarded as important parts of strategy development.

Publishing l The article will: Include a literature review on what already exists. l Focus on different phases of the strategic decisionmaking process and to evaluate the methods in view of the different strategic thinking schools. l Form up an extensive array of formal systematic methods suitable for different phases of strategic decision-making process. l l We write this article to offer information to managers. l We aim to publish the article in a journal that is read not only by academic persons but also by managers as well.