H E LS I N G I N KAU PPAK O R K EAK O U LU
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

Strategy is the logic that governs the choices of a
company among all its decision options.

The strategic decision-making process may vary in
time and scope.

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

Strategic decision-making is a complex process with
many stakeholders.

Strategic decision involves creation, change or
retention of a strategy.

Essence of strategy development is creativity and
dialogue.

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!

Which existing formal “support methods” offer potential
gains in the process of strategic decision-making?
Our intentions are:
 To examine an extensive array of formal and
systematic methods that could be used to aid
strategic decision-making, and
 to describe their characteristics and problem type
suitability.
 To consider the methods problem-oriented.

Current state of our research

Literature review

Well over 60 articles of different methods and
approaches

Methods in use in Finnish companies (a questionnaire)

New ideas:
 Use of multi-methodology in decision-making
processes (hard & soft, quantitative & qualitative,..)
 Not only Material World matters! Both Personal
World and Social World should also be regarded as
important parts of strategy development.
Publishing

The article will:


Include a literature review on what already exists.
Focus on different phases of the strategic decisionmaking process and to evaluate the methods in view
of the different strategic thinking schools.

Form up an extensive array of formal systematic
methods suitable for different phases of strategic
decision-making process.
 We write this article to offer information to managers.

We aim to publish the article in a journal that is read not
only by academic persons but also by managers as well.