摘要：Strategic decision-making is often deemed as an objective exercise, especially when it is supported by—arguably—rational analytical tools. Classic rationality and bounded rationality paradigms assume that top managers approach strategic decision-making by means of a purposive, systematic and comprehensive process (Simon, 1955, 1979). Per this process, managers state concrete objectives, collect relevant information, develop viable alternatives, and identify the optimal course of action, thus maximizing utility. Throughout the past few decades, numerous techniques have been developed to facilitate decision making, including classic tools such as the strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats (SWOT), the political-economic-social-technological- environmental-legal (PESTEL), the external factor evaluation (EFE) or the internal factor evaluation (IFE) matrices, or more recent extensions, such as the internal competitive profile (ICPM), the external competitive profile (ECPM) or the financial competitive profile (FCPM) matrices (Capps III & Cassidy, 2016). The introduction and development of decision support systems (DSS) and other computer-based decision tools further enhanced the strategic decision making processes, and their capability to address increasingly complex situations (Shim et al., 2002). In general terms, most of these decision support tools are intended to deal with the structured parts of complex managerial problems to make decision making more efficient. Strategic decisions, though, involve both structured and unstructured elements, which must be dealt with by means of the decision maker’s judgment, intuition and experience, in addition to any analytical approach chosen.
