Introduction

If it is legitimate for those in industry to use phrases like ‘we have won the battle for industry leadership’, ‘we have successfully defended our market position’, or ‘we have made a killing on the stock market’, there is a notional link suggested between military and business thinking. Both types of organisation are engaged in competition that threatens survival, physical in one case and commercial in the other. Both engage in cognitive activity, which seeks to identify a way of winning, and each defines this process as ‘strategy’. Although the differences need to be acknowledged, there may well be parallels in the way that both these types of organisation reach the decision on their preferred course of action, and these processes are the subject of this study.