Investigating what Determines Strategic Issues in Organizations: A Qualitative Study

Abstract

Research shows that there is currently a lack of a systematic way to identify strategic issues in organizations. While several factors have been reported to show significance or insignificance of a strategic issue, more research is still needed to understand how strategic decision-makers determine strategic issues faced by the organization and also how these issues are diagnosed. This becomes important as effective determination of strategic issues influences decision maker's agenda and priorities. Thus, this paper conducts 21 in-depth interviews with banking experts in Iran. Data analysis is done through grounded theory methodology. The findings of this study show that there are six groups of factors that affect issues to give the meaning of strategic for top managers of organization.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n5s2p553