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The Interpretive Pathway Of Team Decision Making, Bret Sanner

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Organizations are increasingly making their decisions through multifunctional teams that must interpret, prioritize and discuss an issue to respond to it. Research on achievement goals and framing are each instructive for understanding part of this process. The literature on achievement goals, high-level priorities, is important for understanding team discussions and decisions but it has not found any actionable antecedents to those goals. Studies on frames, cognitive structures, demonstrates that most issues are interpreted as threats or opportunities, which impacts individual and organizational actions. However, framing research does not show how those interpretations impact team priorities or behaviors. The purpose of …