Management Decision Interaction and Knowledge Sharing in the Stage-Gate Credit Decisioning Process of Banks
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2013-12-09
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Abstract
Social network theory posits that managerial decision interaction holds benefits for improving the exploitation and sharing of private experiential knowledge acquired and residing in individual managers in a work-group network. To make a contribution to management accounting decision frameworks, this paper utilises the context of the “stage-gate” decisioning process as applied in bank credit decisions to evaluate managerial decision interaction and knowledge sharing towards enhancing the decision process. The key method used is the technique of Social Network Analysis (SNA) to explore quantitative measures to characterize and compare the interaction and decision consultation patterns among officers of two separate credit evaluation teams of two Ghanaian banks with distinctive reputations and performance outlooks as providers of finance to small exporting firms. The measures show clear distinctions in the relational patterns among members of the two teams, and reflecting possible differences in knowledge sharing and complementation in their decision processes of evaluating small firm finance proposals. The finding holds potential to make up for some of the limitations of conventional decision support as formulated in management accounting. Management policy reflections are highlighted for enhancing the decision process among work-group agents in certain decision contexts.