A cognitive approach to group strategic decision taking: A discussion of evolved practice in the light of received research results

Over the last decade there has been a significant development of cognitive approaches to making strategic decisions in complex, uncertain conditions. These assist top management teams to gain a greater understanding of their strategic situation and to develop creative, innovative thinking about the options open to them. By articulating, and sharing individual and collective beliefs they may be subjected to challenge and testing both against group experience and by analysis. This may be seen to promote both individual and organisational learning. This paper describes one particular approach, which shares many features with others of the genre, and which evolved from some of the steps in Shell International's scenario planning. It articulates many of the practical guidelines developed by practitioners and passed on mainly by the apprenticeship model and relates them to published results over some thirty years of research on decision making in small groups. This both largely confirms the guidelines but also further elucidates them. The conceptual foundations of the process and its inter-relationship with more formal, analytical methods are also considered.