Since the conceptualization of bounded rationality, management scholars started investigating how people—managers and entrepreneurs—really make decisions within (and for) organizations. The aim of this eBook is to deeply investigate trends that have flourished within this pivotal research area in conceptual and/or empirical terms, trying to provide new insights on how managers and entrepreneurs make decisions within and for organizations. In this vein, readers that approach this eBook will be taken by hand and accompanied to the discovery of how the mind of decision makers is at the basis of organizational developments or failures. In this regard, published contributions in this eBook underline how executives and entrepreneurs must be ecologically rational, thus be aware of the negative and positive effects that biases can have depending on the context and use them at their advantage. Managerial and entrepreneurial decision-making are phenomena that cannot be detached from the environment in which executives and entrepreneurs are embedded, claiming to establish new approaches to research that looks at decision-making as an individual/group/organization-environment dialectical and multi-level phenomenon.

The creation, success and long-term survival of enterprises are fundamentally linked to the effectiveness of decision-making processes and negotiation capabilities. This book provides an overview of research into how decisions permeate entrepreneurial ventures throughout their lifecycle. A multidisciplinary approach combining psychology, sociology and political science is used to investigate how entrepreneurs address and deal with decision-making. The respective contributions highlight the latest empirical, theoretical and meta-research, and bridge the gap between literature on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial and innovative behaviours with that on decision-making and negotiation. This book is one of the first to combine these streams of research, thereby offering a new and insightful addition to the field of entrepreneurship.

Previous studies revealed that around 75 percent of all start-ups fail at an early stage. One main reason for this tremendous failure rate is that decision-makers are typically confronted with high levels of uncertainty about the viability of their proposed business idea. Following this argumentation, entrepreneurial decisions can be defined as complex decision-making problem under both risk and uncertainty. While risk includes quantifiable probabilities, uncertainty describes situations where neither outcomes nor their probability distribution can be assessed a priori. Consequently, the strategic decision-making context is highly complex and contains lots of “black swan events” that seems to be unpredictable. As previous research does not provide any software solutions for decision augmentation in such domains, the purpose of this study is to explore the decision- making context and then suggest novel and innovative design paradigms and design principles for decision augmentation for strategic decision-making.

An enclyclopedic view of doing business with Japan. Contains the how-to, where-to and who-with information needed to operate internationally.

Widely acknowledged, this popular and detailed text is a comprehensive treatise on Managerial Economics – both micro and macro-economic aspects. This text ensures a thorough understanding of core concepts before advancing to provide an expanded treatment of topics. It explains the economic environment and the impact on managerial decisions regarding price & output determination in different market structures followed by an account of the behaviour of individuals under conditions of uncertainty.

This book illustrates the importance effective cost management systems in providing a supportive environment in which reliable and relevant management information can be generated. Such a cost management system is only attainable if the importance of key business, operational and stakeholder requirements are recognised within the organisational context. In illustrating this importance, this book provides several case studies as examples thereof. The first two case studies focus on the engineering sector and illustrates the development of a cost management system in a water recycling context; and the design of a budgetary system in a mining engineering context. The remaining case studies focus on the services sector, including cost management systems for a digital technology services provider and a medical insurance services provider; an alternative activity-based costing approach for a public sector services provider; and finally a re-designed value stream for an automotive services provider. Academic researchers and industry managers in the fields of management accounting and financial management, as well as engineering and operations management, will find value in the experiences described herein.

In this volume, Dean Shepherd focuses on the varying topics of entrepreneurship unified through conjoint analysis. Although the topic of entrepreneurial decision making is broad, in doing so, he reveals the mechanisms that come into play during the entrepreneurial decision-making process.

It is now widely recognised that rising inequality of income and wealth on the one hand and a slowdown in the rate of economic growth on the other are two of the most important challenges faced today by the global economy as well as by most of the developing economies. This book starts by explaining how these two issues are interrelated. There is no dearth of books on the role that the economic policies of the government can play in meeting these twin challenges. The role of business managers in the private sector of the economy, however, is a relatively neglected area. This book seeks to close this gap in the literature. The central message of the book is that, contrary to popular belief, it is in the interests of private business itself that business managers take into account the effects that their decisions have on the economy as a whole. It is shown that a failure to do so would hurt their own economic prospects in both the short run and the long. Emphasis is given on the importance of an appropriate orientation of managerial decisions and on the role of investors (i.e. the suppliers of capital) in inducing managers to take socially optimal decisions. The book is addressed as much to business managers and students in management courses as to the general reader. Therefore, no prior knowledge of advanced economic theory is presumed. All arguments are built from first principles.

Originally published in 1981. Risk is a problem which all business decision makers have to cope with. The problem is not insurmountable, however, as there now exist well-established techniques for minimising risk and for calculating which of various available options is the optimal one to pursue. This book outlines and discusses these techniques and the theories behind them. Unlike many economic theories which only rarely have any practical applications, the techniques put forward in this book can be used by real businessmen to solve real business problems. The book concentrates on decision-making in two main areas: the allocation of a firm’s resources and the selection of new investments; and the techniques and theories discussed fall into three broad groups: linear programming, decision theory and capital market theory. Intended as an advanced undergraduate textbook for students taking business economics or managerial economics courses, this valuable book will interest specialists and students involved in management studies, microeconomics, strategic planning, operational research, accounting and MBA programmes.