Strategic Decision Making and Firms in Growth Stage
This paper shows partial results from a project research about Strategic Decision Making (SDM) of firms in different stages of the organizational life cycle. SDM has been studied in the context of the firms. However, there is not enough knowledge about how the entrepreneurs make strategic decisions when the firm is in a growth stage. The objective of this research was to examine the effects of specific factors associated with the decision maker influencing Entrepreneurial Orientation (EO) and how the EO influences the firm´s performance. The results were achieved by using empirical data from 173 firms in the growth stage. The results show that SDM has an effect on EO, and that there is a significant relation between EO and firm performance. The paper concludes with a discussion about the results and suggestions for future research of this topic.
