Processo de decisão estratégica em equipes de direção de pequena empresa: o papel da aprendizagem e do conflito cognitivo

Abstract

This work has the objective to analyze the strategic decision process performed by co-directors of PEs, searching this understanding with the attention focused mainly for learning processes and cognitive conflict, in view of the selected cases. The survey sample consists of four technology-based companies, which were chosen according to criteria defined in the study. The methodological approach is descriptive, based on qualitative research methods and multi case study (Eisenhard, 1989). Data collection was done mainly through interviews, whose analysis included two stages, in-case analysis and inter-case as Miles and Huberman’s (1994) recommendations. The survey results showed many ideas about how co-directors perform the process of strategic decision on PEs. They allowed realizing this process, the manifestation of learning in double circuit and cognitive conflicts in the interaction and behavior of co-directors when they accomplish their decision processes. Such constructs directed elements such as intuition and improvisation, inevitably present in strategic decision processes of PEs, which became better worked. The cognitive conflict eased improvisation of the processes as its function was undertaken further analysis and reflections on the decisions. In addition, it was noted that the strategic decisions were not supported only on intuition. Before the cognitive conflicts they were demystified, getting the depth of analysis required via debates in the direction teams. Unquestionable, the strategic decision processes were determined by cognitive conflict that led to the questioning of possibilities, providing opportunities to co-directors a learning process in a double circuit. We can conclude by the survey that the description of how occurred the strategic decision processes in the studied PEs is quite different from ready models in the literature. The most important difference is that they were quite simple, guided more in dialogue than in numerical analysis or projections of future scenarios. The central conclusion is that the behavior of co-directors in strategic decision processes of the four PEs surveyed combines more with the double circuit learning than with rational analysis procedures.