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Critical Thinking & Business Process Improvement

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Journal of Management Development

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics of critical thinking (CT) in contrast with Six Sigma and the “5 Whys” approach that is used by many managers to conduct “Root cause analysis” in business process improvements.Design/methodology/approachThe research integrates principles of traditional literature review with a reflective inquiry of a practitioner.FindingsSix Sigma and its “5 Whys” methodology is insufficient in root cause analysis unless coupled with CT. The paper demonstrates that some extraordinary business successes were achieved by CT, while catastrophic failures were often the result of selective biases, rigid thinking, and/or tendencies to deal with steps of processes, isolated processes, and/or independent situations. Consequently, the paper identifies a new domain that can be added to training in Six Sigma and 5 Whys.Research limitations/implicationsThe study does not address specific ways to integrate CT into Six Sigma, 5 Whys, and/or root cause ana...

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Six sigma has long been deemed a quality initiative in the construction industry. There exists a limited use of six sigma within the UK construction industry and there are many reasons for this. Primarily there seems to be a misconception about the capabilities of six sigma in construction-specific context. Very little research has been done for six-sigma as a process improvement initiative for construction. Therefore, in this dissertation, the capability of six sigma to be used as a process improvement management strategy within the UK construction industry is explored in order to better propagate this method and increase its use within the industry. The current stance of six sigma within construction context is explored, drawing out the benefits and challenges of using its principles, further explaining why the UK’s construction industry lacks its application. After a detailed literature review, two case studies are presented of UK construction projects and companies which used si...

International Journal of Six Sigma and Competitive Advantage

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Six Sigma is a problem-solving methodology. In fact, it’s the most effective problem-solving methodology available for improving business and organizational performance. Bill Smith from Motorola first developed in 1986 the specific elements of Six Sigma. At the beginning, it was a set of practices which have been used in the manufacturing processes in order to eliminate the defects but, as

IRJET Journal

Businesses operate in an environment that is fiercely competitive, where customer happiness and loyalty are essential to any company's success. Most businesses look for managerial techniques to enhance their goods and services, perfect their procedures, cut costs, and raise the profitability and happiness of the capital. These call for the application of improvement approaches, such as Six Sigma, giving businesses the chance to raise customer satisfaction and fulfil their expectations. Six Sigma has gained widespread acceptance across a number of global industries and has become as one of the most crucial topics of discussion in quality control. Using an efficient application of statistical tools and techniques, Six Sigma is a well-structured methodology used to identify the underlying causes of quality issues and to eliminate defects and process variability within the business processes. Additionally, it can assist a business in achieving anticipated goals through ongoing project improvement.

Deepti Bobade

As we know, due to the fast changing economic conditions, the companies are facing a huge impact or we can say reverberations in their ongoing processes. The major hiccups those are being faced by these companies/industries are declining profit margin as well as the demand of the customer for high quality product and product variety. In this manufacturing sector worldwide, six sigma is becoming very popular this makes it adventitious for improving the quality performance and the productivity and also to make the process robust to quality variations whereas in accordance with process management it particularly consolidates the performance/quality excellence into the strategic management of organizations. In this review paper, the relevance and prominence of process management and six sigma for the educational organizations will be examined .This paper presents a review of six sigma and process management implemented in the various sectors of the industries/companies.

Communications of the IBIMA

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Dynamic and global environment, does not offer a spot for managers that improvise and make business moves without relevant information. In order to gain relevant information, it is necessary to observe processes through which value is generated. This implies adoption of process orientation and, based on it, business process management, as a way of running a business. Useful concept for operationalization of business process management is the Six Sigma. One of very important managerial decisions under the Six Sigma concept implementation concerns choosing the process for the improvement. Very often managers must take into the account subjective data, based on their opinion and experience, as personal impression. However, subjective data may become objective when adequate tools and methods for the analysis are used. Quantification is necessary for making decisions and, also, for tracking the results of their implementation. Beside statistical, significant information may provide metho...

IAEME Publication

Six Sigma has been well applied in manufacturing Industries through improving processes that use the DMAIC methodology. Some larger corporations have integrated Six Sigma so well into the corporate culture that it can be considered the DNA of the company. A number of successful cases have been reported of six-sigma-based management activities dramatically enhancing a company’s strategic performance over study periods of several years. However there are number of case studies in the literature regarding Six Sigma, there is a lack of empirical studies that adopt statistical approaches. This study proposes a research model based on Six Sigma to test whether management activities improve corporate competitiveness. Empirical results showing that six sigma activities do indeed contribute to process management refreshment, quality improvement, and finally corporate competitiveness. In addition the possible changes and outcomes which occour by applying this concept of six sigma in various Industries. We hope that this study enables further rigorous studies investigating six sigma as a major strategic activity.

Annals of Faculty of Economics

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The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how business environment and performance can be improved in an organization that used and implement Lean Six Sigma methodology and who create an organizational framework auspicious for theirs employees. Lean Six Sigma can ...

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A Critical Evaluation and Framework of Business Process Improvement Methods

• Research Paper
• Published: 26 November 2015
• Volume 58 , pages 43–53, ( 2016 )

Cite this article

• Rob J. B. Vanwersch 1 ,
• Khurram Shahzad 2 ,
• Irene Vanderfeesten 1 ,
• Kris Vanhaecht 3 , 4 ,
• Paul Grefen 1 ,
• Liliane Pintelon 5 ,
• Jan Mendling 6 ,
• Godefridus G. van Merode 7 &
• Hajo A. Reijers 8 , 9  

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The redesign of business processes has a huge potential in terms of reducing costs and throughput times, as well as improving customer satisfaction. Despite rapid developments in the business process management discipline during the last decade, a comprehensive overview of the options to methodologically support a team to move from as-is process insights to to-be process alternatives is lacking. As such, no safeguard exists that a systematic exploration of the full range of redesign possibilities takes place by practitioners. Consequently, many attractive redesign possibilities remain unidentified and the improvement potential of redesign initiatives is not fulfilled. This systematic literature review establishes a comprehensive methodological framework, which serves as a catalog for process improvement use cases. The framework contains an overview of all the method options regarding the generation of process improvement ideas. This is established by identifying six key methodological decision areas, e.g. the human actors who can be invited to generate these ideas or the information that can be collected prior to this act. This framework enables practitioners to compose a well-considered method to generate process improvement ideas themselves. Based on a critical evaluation of the framework, the authors also offer recommendations that support academic researchers in grounding and improving methods for generating process improvement ideas. Next to the framework and its critical evaluation, this review investigates the research procedures of the studies that were used to create the framework. Related to this investigation, academic researchers can find additional guidance regarding procedures for building and evaluating new methods.

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Towards Data-Driven Business Process Redesign Through the Lens of Process Mining Case Studies

Process Improvement Using the Scientific Method

Exploring the Ambidextrous Analysis of Business Processes: A Design Science Research

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Rob J. B. Vanwersch,  Irene Vanderfeesten &  Paul Grefen

College of Information Technology, University of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan

Khurram Shahzad

Department of Public Health and Primary Care, KU Leuven, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Kris Vanhaecht

Department of Quality Management, University Hospitals KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Centre for Industrial Management/Traffic and Infrastructure, KU Leuven, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

Liliane Pintelon

Institute for Information Business, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

Jan Mendling

Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

Godefridus G. van Merode

Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

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Vanwersch, R.J.B., Shahzad, K., Vanderfeesten, I. et al. A Critical Evaluation and Framework of Business Process Improvement Methods. Bus Inf Syst Eng 58 , 43–53 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-015-0417-x

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-015-0417-x

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A strategic management process: the role of decision-making style and organisational performance

Journal of Work-Applied Management

ISSN : 2205-2062

Article publication date: 16 February 2023

Issue publication date: 24 April 2023

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework for integrating strategic thinking factors, organisational performance and the decision-making process.

Design/methodology/approach

The methodology involves a synthesis of literature and proposes a framework that explores the relationship between strategic thinking enabling factors, organisational performance and the moderating effect of decision-making styles.

The framework includes strategic thinking enabling factors (systems perspective, focused intent, intelligent opportunism, thinking in time and hypothesis-driven analysis), organisational performance and the moderating effect of decision-making styles (intuitive and rational).

Research limitations/implications

This research results in a conceptual model only; it remains to be tested in actual practice. The expanded conceptual framework can serve as a basis for future empirical research and provide insights to practitioners into how to strengthen policy development in a strategic planning process.

Originality/value

A paradigm shift in the literature proves that strategic management and decision-making styles are vital in determining organisational performance. This paper highlights the importance of decision-making styles and develops a framework for strategic management by analysing the existing strategic management literature.

• Strategic management
• Intuitive decision-making
• Rational decision-making
• Strategic thinking process
• Organisational performance

Sinnaiah, T. , Adam, S. and Mahadi, B. (2023), "A strategic management process: the role of decision-making style and organisational performance", Journal of Work-Applied Management , Vol. 15 No. 1, pp. 37-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWAM-10-2022-0074

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Tamilarasu Sinnaiah, Sabrinah Adam and Batiah Mahadi

Published in Journal of Work-Applied Management . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

1. Introduction

Managers are appointed to achieve the organisation's objectives and goals. As these objectives gradually increase with competition, managers must become strategic thinkers with excellent decision-making skills. The strategy towards the organisational outcome highlighted in this section has been widely debated among academic scholars and practitioners. Organisational strategies are essential in sustaining an organisation's competitive advantage to face a complex and uncertain future.

Effective strategic management frameworks enable managers to focus on the complex issues that must be prioritised to hasten decision-making processes ( Dlamini et al. , 2020 ). Whilst enabling managers important to make the decisions needed to direct the organisational effort towards overcoming specific issues ( Wang et al. , 2021 ). The organisation's effectiveness in addressing critical issues with solutions that best fit the current environmental factors will ensure the vitality and image of the organisation. Strategic management is pertinent to manage the organisation in a continuous, systematic manner.

The first segment of strategic management is the effective action programs chosen to reach these goals and objectives.

The second segment is the resource allocation pattern that relates the organisation to its environment.

Moreover, strategic management is defined as translating the thinking process into an action plan that benefits the organisation to sustain its competitive advantages. Strategy also can be categorised as strategic thinking and strategic planning. Strategy is also the commitment of the top-level management to attaining outcomes aligned with the organisation's strategic objectives. Strategy can be realised when there is consistent outcomes or patterns over the years. Therefore, strategy is planning for the future or determining patterns based on consistent outcomes. Organisations must develop plans and also evolve patterns derived from previous organisational outcomes. These phases can be explained as intended strategy and realised strategy.

The effectiveness of the strategies employed can indicate the organisation's performance in achieving its objectives and goals. Organisations need to measure the outcome of the strategies employed by having measurable objectives that will enhance the employees' commitment towards achieving the goals. Conversely, organisational learning and financial measures such as organisational profitability can also benchmark organisational performance. The responsiveness of organisational performance has a direct relationship and is influenced by management efforts to emphasise leadership within the organisational structure. This is done by observing the support and strategies utilised by managers to achieve the objectives and goals. This paper aims to enhance an understanding of strategic management processes involving decision-making styles towards organisational performance. First, this paper highlights strategic management's operational and theoretical approach towards organisational performance. Moreover, this study enhances the result of previous literature on strategic enablers by explaining the effort involving decision-making to strengthen the organisational structure, particularly the decision-making styles (intuitive and rational), that moderates the relationship between the strategic thinking process and organisational performances ( Ritter, 2014 ).

Academic scholars and practitioners have highlighted the importance of strategic management in measuring organisational performance in terms of innovation, entrepreneurship, technology, knowledge, economics, healthcare and organisational performance ( Adam et al ., 2018 , 2020 ; Alosani et al. , 2020 ). Conversely, there is a knowledge gap on the effective judgement practices of strategic management enablers and organisational performance during decision-making ( Abuhjeeleh et al ., 2018 ; Acciarini et al. , 2021 ; Elrehail et al ., 2020 ; Nguyen, 2020 ). This paper analyses the relationship between strategic management and organisational performance and suggests a framework to elucidate the relationship variables such as moderators, rational and intuitive decision-making styles.

2. Literature review

Strategic management is applying strategic decisions towards the organisational vision to achieve strategic competitiveness and sustain competitive advantages ( Alosani et al. , 2020 ; Rodrigues and Franco, 2019 ). Strategic management is a cognitive impairment of structuring the internal capabilities to fulfil external demands and involves plans, patterns, positions, perspectives and plots ( Mintzberg et al ., 2020 ). Strategic management is the managerial discourse involving a framework of the decision-making process, which highlights how the strategy process is formulated in organisations, acknowledging the cognitive management structure of the organisations. Additionally, the organisation's members need to respond effectually to the decisions made by the management and cooperate to ensure that the organisational vision is reached, given that this will affect the organisational adaptability, legitimacy and performance ( Johnsen, 2015 ). Organisations must be aware of the uncertain environments that can influence their welfare.

Consequently, the strategic management process can be reflected in two directions: strategic planning and strategic thinking. Strategic planning emphasises formulating strategies or disciplined efforts to produce strategic decisions to achieve the organisation's objectives ( Bryson, 2018 ). Strategic planning also can be reflected as a system that enhances the decision-making process among the members of an organisation. The strategic management process needs to be fulfilling for the organisation to sustain its competitive advantages. Moreover, strategic thinking is creative, disruptive, future-focused and experimental and often contradicts traditional notions of strategic planning ( Liedtka, 2000 ). Strategic planning is the principal element of the strategic management process involving resource management, implementation, control and evaluation of strategies ( Poister et al ., 2010 ). Strategic planning focuses on formalising existing strategies and employing creativity to enhance perspectives ( Mintzberg et al ., 2020 ). The uncertainties of environments and conflicting perspectives can be evaluated and addressed using strategic thinking as a part of the organisational decision-making process ( Chin et al ., 2018 ). Studies by Goldman et al . (2015) indicated that organisational members are not actively involved during the strategic decision-making process, leading to the decline in the organisation's performance.

The importance of the strategic decision-making process towards organisational performance was emphasised by Steptoe‐Warren et al. (2011) . The research suggested that evaluating, identifying and validating the process will enhance the strategic thinking process to positively impact performance ( Norzailan et al ., 2016 ). Moreover, strategic thinking plays a vital role in analysing the external factors influencing the process. If the organisational members take it lightly, it will lead to perception deficiencies ( Kızıloglu and Serinkan, 2015 ). Additionally, the study highlighted that strategic planning occurs after strategic thinking ( Alatailat et al ., 2019 ; Bonn, 2001 ; Mintzberg, 1994 ). Consequently, this study will focus on strategic thinking as the fundamental phase in the strategic management process.

A conceptual framework that highlights the management principles among the business process in delivering effective solutions for problems is shown in Figure 1 .

3. Strategic management

Strategic management is defined as a framework for achieving success, and it is pivotal for organisations to achieve their objectives and continuously perform better ( Elliott et al ., 2020 ). Additionally, strategic management is a continuous process of looking for a better action plan to ensure the organisation's competitiveness.

3.1 Strategic thinking

The most challenging issue an organisation faces is awareness of the strategic vision and missions, available resources and identifying opportunities for growth within the organisation ( Bryson, 2018 ). Therefore, strategic thinking is a vital element in the chain of processes, which must be carried out effectively and systematically ( Sahay, 2019 ). Nevertheless, organisations need to be aware that strategic thinking can fail miserly if the decision-makers do not realise the strategic enablers or the factors responsible for the effective strategic thinking process. Strategic enablers influence the thoughts and decision process of the organisational members ( Goldman et al ., 2015 ). Therefore, strategic enablers will lead the organisation's members towards idea growth and personal development, while strategic thinkers expedite the organisational performances ( Alatailat et al ., 2019 ).

Individuals involved in the organisational structure utilise their experiences and thought processes in managing conflicts to enhance strategic thinking ( Alaarj et al ., 2016 ). Strategy managers or thinkers recognise the relationship between business responsibilities and departments and organisations and their business stakeholders ( Cabral et al. , 2019 ). This relationship is known as “system thinking”, where an organisation explores the structure reflected in the action and environment that causes the incident. Additionally, the direction or the organisational destiny is a type of strategic intent utilised to help achieve the business objectives. This occurs when all the employees can concentrate on their purpose until it is achievable.

Strategic intent is pertinent in increasing competitive advantages and improving organisational performance ( Chen et al ., 2015 ). Intelligent firms must be considered before becoming competitive to ensure the organisation can create intelligent opportunities to lead the business emerging strategies towards their vision ( Alaarj et al ., 2016 ). Conversely, the organisation should integrate previous events with the current situation to achieve and align with the organisation's objectives. This is vital for organisations to connect to the past and present environment to envision the firms and prepare for any internal or external challenges in their business ( Abubakar et al ., 2019 ). A hypothesis-driven analysis is the core element in the strategic thinking process to gather relevant information regarding the business. Therefore, the challenges faced must be transformed into a hypothesis-driven analysis to understand better the measures needed to be taken by the stakeholders to improve the organisational performances.

3.2 Decision-making style

The role of managers within an organisation must be elucidated to help enhance the decision-making process to create competitive advantages for the organisation ( Dionisio, 2017 ). Moreover, Porter (1990) emphasised the differences between competitive strategy and competitors. Decision-making styles also play a vital role in formalising the strategic decision procedure and can be defined as a habitual or formal response pattern taken by managers when there is an incident ( Kulcsár et al ., 2020 ). According to Acciarini et al. (2021) , decision-making styles are directly related to cognitive styles involved in the strategic thinking process. Decision-making style, which can be both at individual and team levels, can be classified into intuition and rationality ( Dayan and Di Benedetto, 2011 ; Dayan and Elbanna, 2011 ; Giermindl et al ., 2022 ; Luan et al ., 2019 ; Sukhov et al ., 2021 ). Therefore, the author highlighted that cognitive styles could be divided into two different categories: “feeling as information evaluators”, where managers actively gather information intuitively, and “thinking as information evaluators”, where managers systematically collect information ( Behling et al ., 1980 ). Alternatively, decision-making styles can be considered intuitive and rational information gathering and evaluating styles ( Calabretta et al ., 2017 ).

The intuitive decision-making style can be defined as the episodes of uncertainty patterns of action imposed by managers or the decision-makers based on the current situation. In addition, intuitive decision-makers must be aware of current issues and relate the relationship between cognitive schemes with holistic thinking to resolve problems ( Calabretta et al ., 2017 ). It is also believed that the intuitive decision-making process can be influenced by a sudden awareness of information ( Zhu et al ., 2017 ). Decision-makers can determine solutions without fully understanding or realising the extent of information available. Studies agree that the intuitive decision-making process can occur when unsorted information is restructured into an organised pattern of action that transforms into a conscious solution ( Zander et al ., 2016 ). Furthermore, the intuition organisations performance is enhanced when decision-makers utilise the intuition decision-making style when there is no access or relevant analytical data to support them in making strategic decisions that align with the organisation's objectives ( Temprano-García et al ., 2018 ). Conversely, intuition decision-making also contributes positively to the organisations performance when the issues are resolved quickly despite limited resources or knowledge on the current issues.

Studies by Sauter (1999) emphasised that intuition decision-making or illumination is a sudden awareness of information where the decision-makers are unaware of fundamental facts or information. The author also highlighted several ways to establish the intuitive decision-making process. First, detection is an intuition where decision-makers think of several different situations rather than focusing on the current issue ( Kolbe et al. , 2020 ). Working on current strategic issues will enable managers to comprehend related information to help solve the issue by connecting facts or elements that previously did not relate to each other ( Temprano-García et al ., 2018 ). Another form of intuition is evaluation, where the solution appears as an available option creating a sense of certainty or vague feelings towards the analytical data ( Hodgetts et al ., 2017 ).

Conversely, the intuition decision-making process can also be hypothesised as an explicit and implicit decision-making style ( Tabesh and Vera, 2020 ), where explicit decision utilises feelings or emotion and implicit decisions refer to the experience of the relevant situation ( Bhat  et al ., 2021 ; Remmers et al ., 2016 ). Moreover, intuitive decision-making styles also utilise the subconscious processing of verbalised and nonverbalised facts or information ( Tabesh and Vera, 2020 ). A recent study suggests that intuitive decision-making aided managers in enhancing the strategic decision towards the organisation's performance ( Francioni and Clark, 2020 ).

Rational decision-making involves several solutions that will be analysed based on the issues and the relevance of this information towards the current problem before implementing the final decision ( Temprano-García et al ., 2018 ). The structured information consisting of conscious thinking must be evaluated critically ( Acciarini et al. , 2021 ). In addition, the rational decision-making process will enhance the effectiveness of the decision by structuring the decision criteria by highlighting and evaluating the alternatives individually ( Fitzgerald et al ., 2017 ). The decision-makers or the managers who utilise rational decision-making styles are more likely to be vigilant and organised about available information during decision-making ( Zhu et al ., 2021 ).

3.3 Organisational performance

For five decades, organisational performance has been widely researched by academic scholars and business practitioners ( Adam et al ., 2018 ). Organisational performance has been analysed in terms of normative and descriptive explanations in strategic planning research for continuous improvement in managing organisational performance ( Buddika et al ., 2016 ). Organisational performance can be explained by describing how things happen without judging good or bad. Alternatively, the organisational performance also can be elucidated by an evaluation in terms of performance against a benchmarked alternative or standard or by a descriptive statement explaining how the situation occurs without judgement ( Camilleri, 2021 ). Even though most research is done on the continuous improvements of organisational performance, practitioners still have many arguments and discussions on the terminology and conceptual bases to determine organisational performance ( Sarraf and Nejad, 2020 ).

Organisational performance can be reflected based on the results of the organisation's common objectives, given that the methods implemented are coherently used. Consequently, the performance processes' flow or the input resources can be critically analysed ( Tsai et al ., 2020 ). The effectiveness of organisational performance is influenced by the process implemented and can be measured by the achievements. Furthermore, organisational performance is defined as analysing the series of improvements to achieve organisational objectives. Generally, various factors can be associated with organisational performance, such as organisational structures, conflict, cross-cultural and social influences ( Sinnaiah et al. , 2023 ).

Performance measurement is a systematic series to identify the effectiveness and efficiency of people's behaviour to perform to their utmost abilities. Adam et al . (2018) described performance measurement as a unit, department or business process. Therefore, it is conceptualised that there is a structural relationship between organisational performance and performance measurement. Moreover, performance measurement requires substantive and relevant restructuring of input resources and processes to be aligned with the current system to increase productivity level or performance. Failure to analyse the performance measures will weaken the organisational strength and drain the organisation's efforts ( Alosani et al. , 2020 ). Thus, strategic thinking can be a highly effective performance measure for organisations.

4. Propositions

4.1 strategic thinking process and performance.

Strategic thinking is a structured assessment of analysing and synthesising information, intensively assessing the current situation and initiating new ideas or best available options to achieve strategic objectives ( Dhir and Dhir, 2020 ). An organisation's success depends on strategic thinking as it will enhance a decision-maker's skills, abilities and knowledge and help sustain competitiveness in uncertain environments ( Dhir et al ., 2021 ). Consequently, the process of strategic thinking is crucial for any organisation to successfully achieve and survive in the market for a more extended period. Decision-makers need to be effective and cognisant of the business opportunities that arise from innovating new ideas to enhance the strategic portfolio of organisations ( Bryson et al ., 2018 ).

Strategic thinking process will positively influence organisational performance.

4.2 Rational decision-making style, strategic thinking process and performance

In evaluating an organisation's performance and the uncertainties of the environment that influences the complexities in achieving positive growth for the organisation successfully, managers must have decision-making skills that utilise strategic thinking processes. Moreover, managers must be responsible for making fast and effective solutions by analysing, evaluating and prioritising available information to overcome strategic issues and obtain positive results ( Acciarini et al. , 2021 ). According to Calabretta et al . (2017) , there is a positive correlation between the strategic thinking process and decision-making style. Decision-making styles have the same structure as strategic thinking, which involves different levels, such as organisation or individuals.

Rational decision-making will moderate the relationship between the strategic thinking process and organisational performance.

4.3 Intuitive decision-making style, strategic thinking process and performance

Several studies highlight the roles of the strategic thinking process among managers within the boundaries of our cognitive capacities ( Kaufmann et al ., 2017 ) and postulate that mental flexibility can influence it ( Barlach and Plonski, 2021 ). Studies also emphasise that managers or decision-makers often utilise intuition during challenging situations, which is expected compared to the rational way of analysing the issues ( Kaufmann et al ., 2017 ). This intuition process can be a two-fold construct consisting of experience-based and emotionally affected situations. Additionally, this can involve a complex process of information affected by new cues towards previous experiences stored in their memory and transform it into subconscious action in the decision-making process ( Stanczyk et al ., 2015 ). Based on the study done by Simon (1976) , academic scholars and practitioners emphasised that managers are highly keen on inner feelings or gut feelings involving strategic decisions when faced with competitive issues ( Al-Jaifi and Al-Rassas, 2019 ; Bozhinov et al ., 2021 ; Palaniappan, 2017 ). The decision-making process utilising intuition uses available information, which might not have been available in the past, to quicken the process of decision-making. It is also important to realise that decision-making depends on the issues faced by the organisations, and not all issues require a rational decision-making style. For specific issues, managers might only need relevant information, deliberation and formal procedures to derive effective solutions for the organisation compared to instances where the managers are not bounded by any set of procedures or rules to solve the issue.

Therefore, strategic thinking is a process of synthesis, and based on intuitive decision-making style, where the outcome is an integrated perspective of the enterprise, managers can utilise intuition decision-making style to arrive at a solution with complete freedom and flexibility towards the organisational performance. The decision-makers attempt to be involved in the decision-making process while being aware of the current issues and having a sense of relationship among the cognitive schemas with the approach of holistic thinking to determine the solution to the problem ( Khemka and Hickson, 2021 ). It is clear that the intuitive decision-making process would include the issues faced by the organisation in analysing the issues and synthesis ( Zhu et al ., 2017 ) although all the processes occur under the sense of relationship or perception. It is also believed that the intuitive decision-making process could be influenced by the decision-makers upon the sudden awareness of information ( Peng et al ., 2020 ), whereby the decision-makers could propose a solution without the understanding or realisation of why the facts are present.

Intuitive decision-making will moderate the relationship between the strategic thinking process and organisational performance.

5. Discussion and conclusion

This paper reviews strategic management involving the strategic thinking process, organisational performance and decision-making styles with extant empirical work transforming into propositions, with the ultimate goal being to integrate the strategic management process into a systematised and approachable process that needs a fast response. Strategic management plays a vital role in aligning the standard repertoire of an organisation's strategic thinking. Moreover, managers must realise that strategic thinking has a unique process that depends on the situation. The thinking process should be aligned with the specific scenarios to ensure the best solution can be implemented. To sustain competitive advantage, managers should be effectively involved in the strategic thinking process to positively impact their organisations ( Bryson et al ., 2018 ).

The importance of strategic thinking enablers (systems perspective, focused intent, intelligent opportunism, thinking in time and hypothesis-driven analysis) was emphasised in the strategic thinking process and organisational performance. The systems perspective exposes the importance of organisations understanding the relationship between functions and departments internally and externally. Furthermore, organisations need to consider the functional, business and organisation strategies towards a highly competitive environment ( Buddika et al ., 2016 ). Consequently, these systems perspectives will help organisations manage interactions effectively across all departments to enhance productivity. Focus on intent will guide the organisations towards achieving strategic objectives and resisting eccentricity ( Bromiley and Rau, 2015 ). Focus intent will positively aid organisations to be more competitive in the long run as the managers realise the sense of discovery in managing strategic objectives. Therefore, it will improve the performance and consciously push the organisation towards innovation by eliminating limitations and becoming high achievers. Conversely, intelligent opportunism will enhance the strategic objectives by creating new opportunities to be more competitive although the strategies do not align with the current vision of the organisation. This is where intelligent opportunism will play an essential role at the managerial level of the organisation to effectively communicate and measure organisational performances ( Camilleri, 2021 ).

Emerging strategies will boost the organisation's motivation and productivity and should be carefully evaluated from time to time as the future of the organisations might be projected based on the past performance. Therefore, the importance of swift thinking permits the strategic managers to purposefully analyse the mission and vision of the organisation over time. The right action at the right time will help the organisations sustain competitively and save the organisations from self-destruction by limiting the positive changes made to help improve the organisation's performance ( Adam et al ., 2018 ).

Maintaining the balance between thinking creation and cognitive processing ( Calabretta et al ., 2017 ) and enhancing organisational performance (education, financial, creative, innovation, e-commerce and quality) is a challenge faced when creating effective management strategies ( Adam et al ., 2018 ; Al-Jaifi and Al-Rassas, 2019 ; Alharbi et al ., 2019 ; Arvis et al ., 2018 ). In addition, based on previous theoretical perspectives, most of the research scenarios will be based on the governance mechanisms of management and the policy development impacts on organisational performance ( Abubakar et al ., 2019 ). Therefore, based on extensive empirical and conceptual research, strategic thinking processes positively contribute to measuring organisational performance. Based on previous research, this study infers that cognitive development plays an effective role in the segregation of control between strategic thinking, which serves as a barrier to becoming more competitive and innovative in the long run ( Adam et al ., 2018 ). In addition, this happens among employees and directly impacts the quality of the organisational harmonies, such as mutual respect, trust and welfare of the employees. A cognitive processing environment is the use of intuition and rationality in decision-making with equal importance. The managers utilise intuition decision-making styles to resolve unrelated information received. During the strategic thinking process, the managers will receive unsorted information without processed knowledge which will be later organised into sorted knowledge using intuition styles ( Zander et al ., 2016 ). However, the rational decision-making style focuses more on the analytical procedure to conclude an issue the organisation faces. This helps the managers build confidence in the solution by eliminating uncertainty during decision-making ( Zhu et al ., 2021 ). Moreover, managers will only accept solutions with clear and less ambiguous information (rational) compared to managers utilising a more subconscious style (intuition) when formulating solutions. Consequently, there will be conflict in the decision-making process within the organisations.

According to Boamah et al. (2022) , the effectiveness of decision-making styles can differ according to the situation and the dependents. Alternatively, both decision-making styles were highlighted as an alternative way of generating a problem–solution approach within organisations ( Kolbe et al. , 2020 ; Stanczyk et al ., 2015 ). This study argues that both decision-making styles have equal importance in resolving problem–solution approaches and can be a harmonious process to achieve an effective performance measure. This argument is supported by Acciarini et al. (2021) , Tabesh and Vera (2020) . Therefore, this study concludes that both decision-making styles (rational and intuition) positively impact the strategic thinking process and organisational performance. Based on the framework in Figure 1 , the proposed framework highlights the missing sections of cognitive processing among businesses when delivering effective solutions for a complex problem. Organisations have only emphasised human capital and treated it as a scarce resource that will determine the organisation's performance. This study proposed that future strategic management researchers should explore the thinking process literature's core principles to investigate policy development further. Future research should transform these academic initiatives into empirical research by implementing this proposed model.

Conceptual framework

Competing interests: The authors reported no competing interests.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the administration of Azman Hashim International Business School, Block T08, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, for providing the facilities and the PhD Scholar room during this research.

Corresponding author

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