Marian Chapman Moore

Understanding managers' strategic decision-making process

This goal of this paper is to establish a research agenda that will lead to a stream of research that closes the gap between actual and normative strategic managerial decision making. We start by distinguishing strategic managerial decision making (choices) from other choices. Next, we propose a conceptual model of how managers make strategic decisions that is consistent with the observed gap between actual and normative decision making. This framework suggests a series of interesting issues, both descriptive and prescriptive in nature, about the strategic decision-making process that define our proposed research agenda.

Relationship frames and cooperation

We examine how various categories of relationships, and the time horizons of those relationships, affect rates of cooperation and competition in a mixed-motive decision task. We suggest that whether managers are likely to cooperate or compete depends on whether the task is framed as involving a colleague, customer, supplier, or competitor relationship. We suggest that these differences will exist only when the time horizon of the relationship is long term. We test these proposals in an experimental role-play exercise conducted by personal computer. When the time horizon is long, subjects are more likely to cooperate with customers, colleagues, and suppliers than with competitors. Counter to expectations, subjects are more likely to cooperate with competitors than with colleagues when the time horizon is short than when the time horizon is long. In addition, we show how the four business relationship frames vary along several dimensions that successfully discriminate among the relationships. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for helping managers cooperate when cooperation is appropriate.

Recurrent Marketing Decisions: Decision Complexity, Decision Focus, and Firm Performance

In this paper we examine the nature of the decision-making process for recurrent marketing decisions and its effects on firm performance. A conceptual model of recurrent decision-making in a competitive environment is developed and used as a framework for analyzing 96 tactical decisions made by 35 management groups in the last three periods of a management simulation. The decisions were based entirely on a set of decision rules developed by the management groups. The decision rules were coded for whether they were internally or externally focused and how complex their decision process was. These two factors were then used to predict firm performance. There are a number of important results. The greater the uncertainty in the link between a decision variable and its outcome, i) the more likely managers are to prespecify the value of the decision variable rather than construct a decision rule, ii) the less complex the decision rules that are constructed, and iii) the greater the proportion of internally-focused decision rules. In addition, the focus of a decision rule, but not the complexity of the process—independent of the focus—is positively related to performance with firms that focus on both internal and external factors doing best.

Adaptive learning, adaptive utility, and rational behavior in a repeated prisoner's dilemma

Two dimensions of learning are explored in a repeated prisoners dilemma experiment. Subject update their perceptions of the true model of their opponents behavior. Subjects also update their beliefs Kraft Funds at the Fuqua School of Business, helpful comments by Robert Axelrod, Michael Cohen, Fred Feinberg, J. Keith Murnighan, Kip Viscusi, Bob Winkler, and two anonymous referees, and the programming assistance of Oris Stuart and Michael Guiry.

Only the Illusion of Possible Collusion? Cheap Talk and Similar Goals: Some Experimental Evidence

Firms routinely engage in public communications that are available to various constituencies, including competitors. In a laboratory experiment with prisoners dilemma payoffs, the authors investigate the effect of one form of these communications—cheap talk signals: statements that are costless, nonbinding, and nonverifiable and do not directly affect the payoffs for either party. The authors find that only competitors that perceive that they share goals for a joint, coordinated outcome correctly update their beliefs about their competitors next move on the basis of cheap talk signals. The authors contend that the conditions for cheap talk to work may be so rare that cheap talk is more likely to fall on deaf ears than to result in collusion. The authors suggest implications for managers and public policymakers as well as areas for further research.