Essay, Research Paper: Strategic Decision Making

In a dynamic and uncertain environment, strategic decision making is important because it can provide managers with a systematic and comprehensive means for taking into account the external environment, focusing on an organisation's strength, minimising weaknesses, and identifying opportunities in which an organisation can have a competitive advantage. However, the decision may still fail if it is not implemented properly.

Implementation causes the chosen course of action to be carried out within the organisation. It is that moment in the total decision-making process when the choice is transformed from an abstraction into and operational activity. Harrison (1999, p.39)

Implementation a strategic decision includes conveying the decision to those affected and getting their commitment to it. It is an integral component of successful decision making and attaining managerial objectives. No matter how effective strategic planning has been, it cannot succeed if it is not implemented properly. Without effective implementation of a decision, the outcome may not be according to desired results. Harrison (p.40) comments "˜"¦ management can determine how implementation affects the intended outcome inherent in the managerial objective'.

Paul Nutt (1998) research report into the; Leverage, Resistance and the Success Of Implementation Approaches, asserts that there is limited investigations into the success of decision implementation. Nutt (1998, p.213) argues that analysis of decision cases will explore the following crucial factors involved in successful decision implementation.
1. How managers go about implementing strategic decisions
2. Are implementation approaches different between top and middle managers
3. Do top and middle managers use these approaches in similar proportions.

Nutt (1998 p. 213) identified four distinct implementation approaches: Intervention, Participation, Persuasion and Edict that were being used by top and middle management. Nutt (p. 235) argues that "˜"¦ intervention is the best way to implement strategic decisions'

The following paper will compare and contrast these four implementation approaches and argue the reason as to why intervention is a more valuable way for managers to be successful in implementing strategic decisions and attaining managerial objectives.

Firstly, it is important to note that the four implementation approaches, their frequency of use by top and middle managers, and their success demonstrates how managers implement strategic decisions and the outcomes to be achieved. Nutt (p. 223) argues that top and middle management were using the same types of approaches but in different proportions and with different results. Therefore Nutt's analyses of the research findings are predominantly discussed as differences between top and middle management which concluded that top managers seemed to be more successful mainly because of the implementation approach they used.

The study measured success by three main indicators; Adoption, Value and efficiency. Nutt (p.220) defined these three success indicators as follows:

Adoption: Is if a decision is put to use. Based on other research conducted by scholars two measures were created called sustained and complete adoption. Sustained adoption adds ultimate adoption and deletes ultimate rejections

Value: Are the benefits the decision has to the organisation. Measured by secondary informants being asked to provide value ratings. A questionnaire with an anchored scale with five anchors was used to collect the ratings. The scale anchors defined as a rating of 5 as outstanding and a rating of 1 as poor.

Efficiency: The duration taken to implement the decision. Obtained by a questionnaire asking to determine the time from need recognition to development of the plan and the elapsed time from the development of the plan to full use or abandonment of the plan. This was then calculated by the sum of these two measures times by the measures in months, averaged over the estimates made by the informants.