Organisations, Innovation and Complexity: New Perspectives on the Knowledge Economy

University of Manchester
9-10th September 2004

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Diversity in Management Decision-Making and Manufacturing Evolution

Baldwin, J. S. Lopez, A. Allen, P. M. Winder, B. & Ridgway, K.

Complex Systems Management Centre,
Cranfield University, UK

Abstract

This paper explores the diversity of management decision-making and the potential consequences on the evolution of manufacturing form. The research builds on a study conducted by the Universities of Cranfield and Sheffield, which investigated two complimentary, but unrelated, areas of research - manufacturing cladistics, an evolutionary classification scheme from the biological sciences, and evolutionary systems modelling, from the physical sciences. Using this new evolutionary framework, designed to model through simulation the evolution of manufacturing form, new structural organisations were explored. In this last study, however, the opinions of manufacturing managers, operations manager, CEOs and company directors were analysed in an aggregated manner, i.e. the data were averaged out. As such, significant information was lost.

This research, however, compared and contrasted the different opinions of decision-makers. A Spanish group of four companies was selected for the case study. The CEO, and 3 directors, responsible for sales, quality and research and development, were interviewed using a semi-structured qualitative questionnaire. From this, 25 company characteristics and four selection criteria were identified, which provided the basis for a quantitative questionnaire. This questionnaire was designed to gather views of how the company characteristics interacted with one-another in the context of the four selection criteria. Answer options were based on a 7-point Likert scale determining the degree of positive/neutral/negative interactivity. The results proved to be very rich and, in terms of the evolutionary trajectories that the firm may take, provided important insights into the consequences of decision-making of different managers that inevitably base their decisions on different information, values and beliefs. The aim of this and related research is to develop a user-friendly decision-support tool for management.

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