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A comparative study of executive decision-making in the United States and Ghana
Abstract
The research presented here examines core decision making orientations of top executives of small and medium-sized corporations in two national cultures--the United States and Ghana (Africa). The purpose is to understand how these executives arrive at the actions they initiate on behalf of their organizations; whether the approaches differ significantly, and, if they do, in what ways. The study adopts a behavioral approach and is undergirded by the proposition that executives, when faced with a decision problem, have preferences for particular types of decision procedures. The study deals directly with individual and group differences among executive decision makers. Two human information processing (HIP) metaphors--rational and intuition--are used to develop a number of hypotheses. Data were gathered through a questionnaire survey instrument adapted from the Taggart & Valenzi (1990) HIP survey, and from the works of Heller & Wilpert (1981) and Hofstede (1980). Questionnaires were mailed to three hundred and twenty U.S. executives. Thirty-one percent of the executives completed and returned the survey instrument. One hundred and eighty Ghanaian executives were personally contacted in eight cities with the survey instrument. The response rate among these executives was forty two percent. Survey questionnaires were analyzed using analysis of variance procedures on the rational and intuitive index scores. T-tests were conducted on the "decision centralization scores". The results suggest that there were differences in the decision making orientation of United States and Ghanaian executives with regard to the rational metaphor. The differences were, however, not in the direction predicted. Executive respondents in Ghana, more than executives in the United States, appeared to have greater orientation to decision information processing using logic, planning and ritual. No significant differences were found in relation to executives' orientation to the intuitive metaphor in the two countries. As was suggested in the literature, executives in Ghana preferred more centralized decision making than executives in the U.S. There was evidence of association between "decision centralization" and the intuitive mode. The implications of the results of the study are that the biocomputer functions of the executive brain are already in action in practice, and research and theory building must provide clarifications equally for the two modes of executive thinking. Secondly, decision information processing (using the rational and intuition metaphors) appears to be influenced less by culture-specific decision approaches than by culture-general organization perspectives. Third, the study should also be interpreted as a learning process in "the transferability of western-based concepts and methodologies" to other cultures, such as Ghana (Adler, et al., 1989:67).
Subject Area
Management|Cultural anthropology
Recommended Citation
Atsunyo, Mattson Kudjo, "A comparative study of executive decision-making in the United States and Ghana" (1992). Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest. AAI9233027.
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations/AAI9233027