Tackling Strategic Problems

This book brings together an international team of academics and practitioners in the fields of organization and management science. Drawing on their experiences as consultants within a wide variety of organizational settings, the authors explore key issues in the provision of effective decision support to groups tackling complex strategic problems.;The authors discuss the use of the techniques and methods they have developed for group decision support, including developments in "mixed methods". They consider the organizational and inter-organizational contexts for strategic decision-making and the approaches to group decision support. The crucial significance of the relationship between particular methods and the personal styles and "theories-in-action" of both consultants and client groups is addressed. The contributors also argue for attending to the often neglected "trivialities" of the physical environments for group problem-solving.;Threading through all the chapters is a concern with the interaction between analytic help with the complex "contents" of strategic problems, and the management of "process" as the key to successful group decision support.