**5. Conclusion**

environment and their memories. Even if they are aware of all the details, they necessarily do not investigate them deeply and do not always give the appropriate importance, before the deci‐ sion. On the contrary, they often deal with the first what they think of. It usually occurs without some apparent effort and they cannot answer the question of why they come up with such a proposal. Managers often tend to trust their intuition, simply because it is quite successful in some cases. It seems like it is possible for them to be satisfied with intuition in many situations. Certainly, we must point out on supportive opinion about intuitive decision making, mainly in small corporation managers. These people do not have time to compare, logically and sys‐ tematically, all available options. They are learned to make decisions in a certain way, which has worked and saves time so far. On the basis of associations with different designs and past experiences, they assess the situation and almost immediately act on the grounds of experi‐

However, change of minds is so difficult and slow. Intuitive judgments may or may not be correct and controlled. It is significantly impacted by various inclinations, tendencies, abbre‐ viations, and heuristics. In this case, the best way of how to control the intuitive judgments is

This is why many authors point this when they talk about counter‐arguments [26–28] and many others. "Faith in intuition is understandable, because people always search for mysti‐ cal powers for direction of their faith" [26]. It adds that intuition has its place in decision making, but "anyone who thinks that intuition is a substitution for logical thinking, it is only risky devotion of self‐deception. Intuition is unstable and independent leader that will easily lead you to success but also to a catastrophic disaster" [26, p. 117]. Therefore, intuitive deci‐ sions require years of experience and learning of facts, situations, concepts, procedures, and

In a small company, and even more in micro‐corporations, the personal characteristics of the decision maker have a significant impact on the decision‐making process, because in most cases the decision making is domain of only one (the owner‐manager) or two people. Heuristics, deviations of rationality, or emotions of managers can suppress the whole deci‐

It was not very difficult to investigate the emotional, cognitive, and other socially conditioned tendencies of managers on account of the structure of research. For a deeper understanding, as the object of the research, it would be preferable to choose individual decisions in a smaller number of enterprises that have a wide variety of problems. It may arise in the decision‐mak‐ ing process from which it is possible to create specific, different influences of emotions, person‐ ality characteristics, heuristics, prejudice, deviations from rationality, ethical values, and so on. Managers were asked a few of questions to determine the above tendencies. Answers were acquired in the form of a controlled interview, so the meaning of the questions would not be mis‐ understood. It was about questions like: Do you prefer the experience or an advice of an external consultant? Would you prefer a lucrative sale of the company or continuation of the enterprise in

ence and intuition. The major advantage is the ease, speed, and parallelism.

by rational mental processes, which is more demanding of time and effort.

**4.4. Emotional, cognitive, and socially conditioned tendencies of managers**

abstractions that are stored in the human brain.

100 Corporate Governance and Strategic Decision Making

sion‐making process and bring him/her into the wrong end.

Strategic decisions are usually complex by its nature and try to change the overall scope of authority and the direction of the company, as opposed to simple, routine decisions which are intended to provide a competitive advantage. It relates to the different areas and its effective recruitment has a crucial importance for small and large businesses, since strategic decisions significantly affect business performance. However, research and studies focused and are still focusing mainly on large companies, while there are significant differences between the pro‐ cess of strategic decision making in large and small companies. It causes that the application of theory and research of large companies to small company is limited.

An implemented research allowed us to verify stated research questions. Research question 1 was partially answered. The process of strategic decision making in small corporations mostly tends to intuitive model approach of decision making. Simultaneously, it also appears the elements of limited rational model approach combined with certain characteristics of incre‐ mental and decreasing model of strategic decision making. Limited rationality is impartial in small corporations; worse thing is that in these enterprises it is also a consequence of the lack of quantitative analyses, the low level of knowledge, and the use of analytical tools. The answer to the second research question is: the main factor that is formative in strategic deci‐ sion making in small corporations is customers. The third research question about the effect of experience, ethical aspects, emotions, personal characteristics, and subconscious information processing in taking strategic decisions was also answered.

Strategic decision making in small corporations takes place as a process of non‐systematic, ran‐ dom, and passive searching for information largely from the external environment, which lead to the adoption of acceptable or "fairly good" decisions compared to the decisions with maximum effect. Managers accept the value and ethical decisions based on previous experience, affected by feelings and emotions. They subconsciously make decisions on the basis of skills and knowledge.

Based on the analysis of the theoretical basis and research results, we can include the main aspects influencing and forming process of strategic decision making by managers of small firms, shown in **Scheme 1**.

Although the global economic crisis sharply hits small corporations, just these react so sen‐ sitively to the economic recession and on the other hand are much more adept in an effort to rescue as larger enterprises. Small corporations cannot afford crews and teams of specialists who would dedicate exclusively to the issue of decision making at the strategic level and apply its principles and procedures. However, they can improve their implemented process of decision making and turn their "shortcomings" over the process running at large enter‐ prises for the occasion. Great competitive advantage, which is given in the research, is the proximity to the customers who can systematically and through supporting implements of decision making use the opportunity to improve the process. The challenge for the improve‐ ment may be a significant influence of personality traits manager in approving decision mak‐ ing. Purposeful development of managerial skills using a variety of tests and procedures, to regain consciousness of the existence of certain tendencies and preferences, you can better manage the economical psychological tendencies and detect errors before they affect the final decision. By greater focus on the internal resources, particularly for people to encourage their creativity and entrepreneurial spirit it is possible to improve the quality and effectiveness of the entire process of strategic decision making.

**Scheme 1.** Aspects of the strategic decision making in small corporations. Source: own processing.
