Managerial Decision Making in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises: An Empirical Study in Valencia Region (Spain)

In the present paper a study of decision making in Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) from the Valencia region (Spain) is presented. The objectives of the study are the following:
• To analyse the actual decision making processes of SMEs in the region of Valencia (Spain)
• To discover the patterns in decision making and establish a common procedure for all of them
• To propose a strategy to introduce the use of Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) techniques in their usual decision making procedures

To achieve these objectives, the research is divided into two clearly defined stages. In the first one, an empirical analysis of the decision making models of SMEs in Valencia Region is carried out by means of a statistical study (reliability and correlation analysis) from the results of a questionnaire answered by 129 Valencian SMEs. This stage shows that these companies can be classified in structured and ill-structured, according to the decision making patterns they follow.

In the second stage, the utility, the capacity and the guidelines for adaptation of MCDA techniques to these decision patterns will be analysed working with Focus Group. The main aim of these techniques is to prioritize a group of proposed alternatives according to pre-selected criteria and their weights (or relative importance), taking into consideration the opinion of different experts.

Finally a MCDA methodology is proposed, which has the advantage of bringing more information to the decision process. That also means to add transparency, which is always recommended when dealing with managerial decisions and should be the first step to improve them.
Keywords: Decision Analysis, Decision models, Managerial decision making, Multicriteria, Small to Medium Sized Enterprises.