| dc.description.abstract | In today's society, it seems that all companies focused on innovating. This enables them to attract new customers, satisfy the customers they have, and to increase revenues. As innovation can be very challenging to handle, many companies have chosen to use certain frameworks to systematize the innovation process. A natural part of the innovation process is decision making, everything from if the idea should be edited to whether it should be commercialized. Much research has been conducted on how decision making is done and what affects us when making decisions. There is, however, a lack of established theory on how different factors affect us, especially how it affects us during the innovation processes. Because of this, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate how rationality and emotions affect the decisions that are made when large established companies work systematically with innovation. In order to answer this, it has been formulated two research questions:
1. What are members of top management teams basing their decisions on?
2. How are members of top management teams affected by facts and emotions?
To find answers to this, a theoretical and empirical study was performed, with the help of a single case study, Securitas. The empirical data was obtained through in-depth interviews conducted with Securitas top management team, called Strategic management group (SMG). This has set the basis for the analysis and discussion in the thesis. The findings were then discussed and compared to established theory.
Some of the findings suggest that top management members base their decisions on (fact) return on investment, risk, cost-benefit and customer demand. However, also are very influenced by passion, gut feeling, and consensus. The findings suggest that top management's need for return on investment and more puts a damper on the number of ideas and innovations that are created. In addition, it seems that it slows down the implementations, which in return leads to reduced competitiveness. Furthermore, the findings suggest that passion is essential for the ideas to be invested in, and it may seem more important than both consensus and facts. | en |
