Abstract
<jats:p>The decisions we make define our past and significantly co-shape our future. The decisions made by the managers about the company define the past performance of the company, its current market, economic and social position and its future place in the industry, in the national economy and in the global economic environment. Decision-making is the fundamental method of managerial work, which is why managers are often called decision-makers. The fundamental condition for ensuring the success and efficiency of the operations of organizations is that managers at all levels of organization management make valid decisions, which is why it is important to focus a large part of attention on the process of making them. Decision-making is a psychological (cognitive) process that depends on our perceptions in the external environment or perceptions related to the object of decision-making and is defined to the greatest extent by the decision-maker's cognitive process. The aforementioned assumptions represented the basis of the formation of the development of a theoretical model of the cognitive process in decision-making processes in management, which, based on the measured manifest structure of decision-making styles, enables a clinical assessment of decision-making practices and the riskiness of the decision-making behaviour of managers on an individual and collective decision-making levels in organizations. The model is developed on the basis of the synthesis and interpretation of the findings of many authors who have dealt with decision-making processes from various perspectives and have developed various theories and models to explain these processes at the level of theoretical and applied studies. From the point of view of understanding the process, the model is hierarchical, as it deals with the process at different levels, which define the superiority and subordination of cognitive functioning in the decision-making process, and the hierarchy is defined not only procedurally, but also substantively. The developed model allows us to analyse, verify and clinically predict the decision-making behaviour of each individual manager, identify the consistency of management teams in decision-making processes, risky decision-making behaviour of individuals and their influence on decision-making processes at the collective level, which is also applicative verified. In the continuation of present book, based on the findings from the developed theoretical model and the model of the integrated cognitive decision-making process, a comprehensive concept of the strategic decision-making in management was developed. The concept is characterized by a high degree of consistency between the strategic management process and the integrated cognitive decision-making process, as the processes or sub-processes of both concepts follow each other in the same order in both processes. In the last part of the present book was on the basis of all previous findings developed, a decision model for identifying risks in the judgment and decision-making of managers. The developed decision model follows the logic of mechanical decision models with linear regression and the methodology of expert modelling, whereby in the first part the proportions of the presence of an individual decision-making style and in the second part a combination of decision-making styles is weighted differently. The applicative value of the model was tested on selected managers, for whom a clinical assessment of their individual structure of decision-making styles was previously made, which enables comparability and validation of the two developed models (cognitive and decision). The calculated values of managers' risks are appropriately distributed into risk classes and have a relevant predictive value for assessing the decision-making behaviour of an individual manager in a situation where he will have to judge or make a decision.</jats:p>