International Behavioural Perspectives on How Boards of Directors and Top Management Teams Interact and Plan Strategically for Uncertain Futures

该项目将涉及对董事会和最高管理团队在战略决策过程中的作用进行国际比较研究。这项研究将利用行为理论的观点来审查正式和非正式的战略制定以及决策程序和程序是如何运作和发展的。它将特别关注企业领导人如何看待和分析战略规划中的风险和不确定性。这项研究将采取以民族志为基础的方法论方法。它将利用一系列定性工具。这将包括与多个组织进行深入的实地考察。这将包括观察非执行董事和执行董事与高级管理人员之间的会议和其他非正式互动，以及跟踪他们中的一些人。这些技术将与更多组织的半结构化和结构化面试相结合，以促进比较视角。采用这种方法的目的是深入了解组织的“内部”运作，特别是执行董事和非执行董事与高层管理团队之间的关系动态，以及这些关系如何影响伴随战略规划而来的政治谈判和知识创造过程。这项研究将在多个领域做出独特贡献。它的目的是加强对企业决策者在制定战略时如何考虑未来的理解。特别是，它将旨在分析它们如何应对可量化风险和不确定性之间往往存在的微妙差异，以及这对它们思考期货的方式意味着什么。这样做的目的是扩大对使用情景分析的理解，以深入了解如何使用情景规划方法来预测和规划不确定的未来，以及这一方法的潜在局限性。该项目的比较性和国际性也将增强人们对更广泛的文化和制度因素在公司领导人如何思考和管理风险和不确定性方面所起作用的理解。此外，这项研究将寻求挑战主流理论观点，即董事会是对高管代理人行使控制权的“委托人”。它将借鉴基于资源的观点，该观点认为董事会的作用是帮助公司获得和保持对资源的访问。它还将批判性地审查管理概念的用处，该概念认为执行董事和非执行董事以及最高管理人员拥有共同的目标。通过这样做，它的目的是促进行为理论范式的发展，这将借鉴一些理论线索。这有助于解释董事会和最高管理团队之间的合作和共同目标如何能够提高战略规划进程的有效性。

This project would involve an international comparative study of the role of boards of directors and top management teams in strategic decision making processes. The research would draw on behavioural theoretical perspectives to examine how formal and informal strategy formulation and decision-making routines and processes function and have been developed. It would pay particular attention to how corporate leaders view and analyse risk and uncertainty in strategic planning. The study would take a methodological approach grounded in ethnography. It would draw on a range of qualitative tools. These would include in-depth fieldwork with a number of organisations. This would involve observing meetings and other informal interactions between non-executive and executive directors and senior managers, as well as shadowing a number of them. These techniques would be combined with semi-structured and structured interviews across a larger number of organisations to facilitate comparative perspectives. The aim of employing such an approach would be to gain insight into the 'inner' working of organisations, particularly the dynamics of relationships between executive and non-executive directors and top management teams, and how these affect the political bargaining and knowledge creation processes that accompany strategic planning.The research would make a distinctive contribution in a number of areas. It would aim to enhance understanding of how corporate decision makers think about the future in formulating strategy. In particular, it would aim to analyse how they cope with often subtle differences between quantifiable risk and uncertainty, and what this means for their ways of thinking about futures. In so doing, it would aim to extend understanding of the use of scenario analysis to generate insights into the use of scenario planning methods to anticipate and plan for uncertain futures, as well as potential limitations of this approach. The comparative and international nature of the project would also enhance understandings of the role of wider cultural and institutional factors in how corporate leaders think about and manage risk and uncertainty.In addition, the study would seek to challenge the dominant theoretical view, which sees boards of directors as 'principals' exercising control over executive 'agents'. It would draw on the resource-based view, which sees a role of the board as helping firms secure and maintain access to resources. It would also critically examine the usefulness of the concept of stewardship, which sees executive and non-executive directors and top managers as having shared aims. In so doing, it would aim to contribute to the development of a behavioural theoretical paradigm, which would draw on a number of theoretical strands. This could help explain ways in which collaboration and shared aims between boards of directors and top management teams could improve the effectiveness of strategic planning processes.