Unstructured technology decision making : a case study

Abstract: Technology plays an important role in company competitiveness and, like any other sources of competition, needs to be managed based on a strategic point of view. Therefore, how technology is selected and prioritised is integral to support the company strategic objective. The information characteristics of strategic decisions are that they are ad hoc, forward looking, external and wide scoped. In addition, new technology is filled with uncertainties. Operational managers at lower levels make day-to-day decisions that are structured and information is easily available, inward looking and certain. However, from time to time they have to make technology decisions, which are unstructured in nature, or make recommendations to senior management about the technology. This creates a problem as the operational managers usually make structured decisions. If a decision-making process guideline is available to be utilised during technology rollout decisions, which are unstructured in nature, it will provide decision makers at operational management level with a structure and help decision makers to make decisions that are effective. To derive a decision-making process guideline, this study made use of two case studies within one organisation to determine how previous technology decisions were taken and what factors were taken into account. In both cases, the recommendations by the operational managers were overruled by the senior executives. The case study method was used as it provided the researcher with in-depth knowledge of how decisions were taken. It was found that the company had a high-level process of making decisions which consisted of a white paper generated by operational managers making recommendations on whether the technology should be implemented or not. A PowerPoint presentation was prepared summarising the white paper and presented to the senior executives to ratify the recommendations. It was also found that there was no standard process of generating the white paper and Power- Point presentation and as a result there were inconsistencies in how the information was gathered and presented. Based on the literature review and case study findings, a recommended decision-making process guideline was derived.M.Phil. (Engineering Management