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Introduction
To Simon (1960), a Nobel laureate and one of the founding fathers of the scientific domain of decision-making, “decision-making” is synonymous with the entire process of management. Decision-making is central to what managers do (Hickson et al., 1989; Michel, 2007; Stewart, 2006), and is integrated into all kinds of management functions (Harrison, 1999). Making effective strategic decisions is one of the critical abilities that managers are required to have and develop to lead their organizations in the increasingly volatile and competitive business world. As Porter (1985) emphasizes, the success or failure of a firm relies mainly on the managers’ competitive ability to make strategic decisions.
Strategic decisions address ambiguous and complex issues, engage various departments and involve a high level of organizational resources (Amason, 1996). Because of the extensive uncertainty, ambiguity and risk associated with strategic decisions (McKenzie et al., 2011), gathering, analyzing and considering reliable data and information are critically important in strategic decision-making (Nicolas, 2004). In a turbulent and volatile business context, organizations need to link their strategic dimension with their knowledge assets (Nonaka, 1988, 1994). Knowledge originates in the minds of people (Davenport and Prusak, 2000) and if effectively managed can help organizations to generate value. Knowledge management (KM) is generally defined as a systematic process for creating, sharing and implementing knowledge. A KM system is an information technology (IT) system developed to facilitate and support the creation, dissemination and implementation of knowledge in organizations (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). KM systems are considered to be a class of information systems designed and implemented to manage organizational knowledge. KM initiatives involve social and cultural facets of the organization and rely on IT as an enabler (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). From the very early versions of KM systems (such as discussion forums, knowledge repositories, computer-supported cooperative work, knowledge bases and inference engines) to the more recently developed KM systems (such as the new KM portal in Microsoft Office 365 and SharePoint Portals), KM systems have been widely used to identify, share and utilize knowledge, as well as to incorporate knowledge into problem-finding and problem-solving processes.
While KM systems are becoming integrated parts of business processes by providing text document analysis in many organizations – for example, Xerox (Cox, 2007) – the...