ABSTRACT
Research on strategic decision making processes has seen steady development over the years, growing both in the sophistication of the models examined and the size of the empirical samples employed, yet it has remained predominately rooted in single nation studies. Mintzberg, Raisinghani and Theoret (1976) describe strategic decisions in Canadian organizations. March and Simon’s (1958) keynote studies of satisficing, the descriptions of incrementalism by Lindblom (1959) and Quinn (1980) and the investigation of phase theory by Nutt (1984) are all based on organizations in the USA. Hickson et al. (1986) based their analytical clustering of decision processes on a sample of organizations from the UK. With the notable exception of Heller and his colleagues (DIO International Research Team, 1979; Heller et al., 1988) there have been very few cross-national comparisons of strategic decision making processes and almost none on a large scale.
