Decision-Making Culture and its Influence on Information Culture
Approaches to Decision-Making Across Different Organizations
How do organizations make decisions and what is the influence of these approaches to decision-making on information culture?
Our research uncovers some notable differences between companies based on their decision-making culture and industry sector.
The top-down approach is the dominant style of decision-making with 39% of companies employing it, followed by organizations run by management committees (34%) and only 18% making decisions in a democratic or collaborative fashion.
IT and services organizations are the most democratic when it comes to decision-making. The utilities and retail and wholesale industries are the least democratic but each also stands out for a different reason.
While decision-making in utilities companies, the least democratic of all industry sectors, seems to be dominated by management committees (50%), an overwhelming 67% of respondents from retail and wholesale companies have a top-down culture of decision-making.
A correlation can be identified between democratic/collaborative decision-making and the perception of being better decision-makers. The more collaborative the decision-making approach, the more people tend to classify their company as best-in-class.
On the flip side, respondents from companies with a predominantly top-down culture feel they are lagging behind the competition in using data for competitive advantage.
