Culture on Strategic Decision Making: Janissaries and Mercenaries

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the strategic meaning of culture as a core competence. In order to fulfill this aim we attempted to understand the effects of cultural values and beliefs on the strategic decision-making process. We used grounded theory method for this inductive qualitative research. We conducted 33 interviews with strategists (business owners and top level managers) from 27 different companies operating in Kayseri OIZ (Organized Industrial Zone) furniture industry. We used conceptual coding procedures to analyze the data. Consequently, we detected a clash of cultural value sets between two different and incompatible cultural value domains named "Western-Rational" and "Muslim-Turkish", in the field. We also observed that the strategists interviewed were facing with this clash both in their business and daily lives and they were exhibiting different behavioral outcomes in the face of this clash. We classified and conceptualized their behavioral outcomes into two behavioral patterns as the Janissary and the Mercenary behaviors. Finally, we observed that cultural values and beliefs (religious, traditional and rational) are operative at all levels of the strategic decision-making process and thus, they have a strong and deep meaning in strategic management processes as core competences.