1.1. Background to the Study
The most common task of managers and executives is decision-making (Kerzner, 2013). So, by providing appropriate decision support, there would be enhancement of managerial decision-making. Making better-faster decisions, and implementing more decisions, leads to the organizational success. Generally, good decision outcomes arise from a good decision process (Pettigrew, 2014).
According to Hammond et al. (2015), for an organization to make strategic decisions, it must gather intelligence, set directions, uncover alternatives, assess these alternatives to choose an action plan, and, finally, implement the plan. Many scholars agree that the key step in the process is assessing alternatives (Hammond et al., 2015; Anderson et al., 2015; Velasquez & Hester, 2013).
There are notable differences that occur when decisions are made by public organizations versus private organizations (Galli, 2017; Gwartney et al., 2014: Eden & Ackermann, 2013). The decision-making processes for private organizations are smoother compared to public organizations, which experiences more turbulence, interruptions, or even conflicts. The attribution of these differences, by a number of scholars, depends on the roles played by private and public business units in the society. The primary role for private sector organizations is creating wealth for their shareholders, through the provision of services and goods in the markets. The government sector has its main role of providing services to the public through contracts and collecting information regarding people’s needs, leaving a call for a public response (Agrawal & Sharma, 2014). Thus, different approaches for decision-making are needed in these two sectors due to the divergent responsibility varied extent of expectancy and accountability (Boyne, 2002).
In distinction private and public business entities, a variety of schemes have been used. These schemes used to highlight these differences include transactional, environmental, and process (Galli, 2017; Gatti, 2013). To account for strategic decision-making, these dynamics, and some peculiarities they identify, have been deeply illustrated in this paper. The focus of this study is to compare decision-making for senior management of private firms and of public firms, because it is vital to see how they both view prospects of budget approval and for people to learn about the risks associated.