Introduction
In the article “Factors Influencing Creativity in the Domain of Managerial Decision Making,” Cameron M. Ford of the University of Central Florida and Dennis A. Gioia of The Pennsylvania State University earlier identified the relative underdevelopment of management research on managerial decisions. While asserting and providing literary evidence that, most previous researches have mainly focused on identifying individual differences between managers based on high or low creativity, and that these previous researches have ignored the fact that differences in complex social environments lead to differences in decision making, they conducted their study. In their study aimed at examining the factors that influence creativity of the decisions managers make in their organizations, these researchers also identified the fact that previous studies, which have considered the environmental factors have limited their studies to Research and Development labs, which do not provide the general outlay of the phenomenon. As a matter of fact, Ford and Gioia believe that, the decisions made by the upper level managers, especially those that might be considered creative, impute meaning to organizational events that subsequently influence the interpretations and actions of other organizational participants (Ford & Gioia, 2000).
Strategic Analysis
The theoretical framework, which uses the three interrelated subsystems as the person, the domain and the field, explains the significance of these three subsystems in influencing the decisions made by executives or managers. The creativity of a manager does not occur within the individual, but as an interaction of the three subsystems. The domain-based view explains how the creators and the stakeholders of these decisions interact and act over a period during the introduction, selection, and retention of creative actions within an organization. The domain based view, therefore implies that the decisions made by the managers, which also affects their subordinates, are subject to evaluative assessments by judges comprising the stakeholders affected by these decisions. The basis of the assessment of the decisions of the managers is provided by the domains. This accurately indicates that the managers have influence in the organizations through their decisions, which are also subject to evaluation and analysis by the stakeholders.
The managerial decision making domain as earlier mentioned, indicates that the creativity of a manager does not occur within the individual, but as an interaction of the three subsystems. The current research accurately identifies a gap in research, which has mainly focused on the individual differences between managers, or in controlled research and development laboratories. The effects of social environments in different managerial domains and organizational settings vary across domains of action. Additionally, the manager’s alternative generation process, which forms a key phase in the conceptualization of activity, has been overlooked in research. This effectively makes this current research study useful since it considers the differences in the organizational settings. The social environments within organizations differ from one organization to another confining the research to research and development labs deny the investigators the opportunity to understand the interrelatedness and uniqueness of every organizational setting. For instance, the factors affecting decision making in the textile industry might not be the same for the hospitality industry based on the factors that influence consumption, distribution, and production.
The method used in the current research study was accurate. The sample size was adequate to make comparisons. 51 managers from different organizations implied that the researchers had a variety of managers from different industries, and, therefore, social environments, which affect decision making differently. The high response from the managers (51 out 65) indicates the significance and the relevance of the study (Ford & Gioia, 2000). Data collection through interview protocol and filling of questionnaires was accurate according to the level of professionalism of the respondents (participants). According to the nature of the study, the researchers developed accurate questions to examine their interest. Additionally, the fact that the researchers combined managers from different fields indicated that the study was aimed at overcoming the previous limitations of the research and development labs as well as the studies on individual differences among the managers. The current study also accurately identified and examined the dependent and independent variables including importance, common perspective, creativity goal, and familiarity with solutions, trust, discretion, rationality, politicality, flexibility, external forces, and negative feedback. The statistical procedures used in the current study also provide accurate analysis of the data. The stepwise discriminant analysis was used to test the hypothesis of the research study by identifying variables that discriminated among decision possessing varying degrees of novelty and value (Ford & Gioia, 2000).
Solutions and Recommendations
The results of the research study revealed that, evolutionary and teleological processes both significantly affect the creativity of managers. Significantly, it can be concluded that the researchers identified that the social environments interact to influence the creativity of managers on making decisions based on novelty and value. Despite the challenges and the strengths of this research study as well as its findings, further research should be conducted to ensure that the factors independently affecting novelty and value are independently examined to establish their individual implications on creativity of the managers.
References:
Ford M. C. & Gioia A. D. (2000). Factors Influencing Creativity in the Domain of Managerial Decision Making. Journal of Management. 26 (4): 705–732
