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The Abstract:
Research-based decision-making is quite a new technique of decision making in the field of management. It involves making decisions based on well-researched and refined data. Through there exists a hug research on the technique, there is no research on the benefit of applying research-based decision making when making investment decisions. To bridge this gap, the aim of this dissertation is therefore to investigate the benefits of research-Driven Decision-Making in Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) Investments. The objectives addressed in the research include the evaluation of the SABIC’s growth since its incorporation, determination of the changes made by SABIC to increase competition and growth over the years and identification the organizational strategic plan applied by SABIC. The study will also determine the strategy to use in the emerging markets and establish SABIC’s willingness to invest in research. A deductive approach is adopted in the study, which involves developing research hypotheses based on the theories existing. The research covers five chapters from the introduction to conclusion and recommendations.
1.1 Background of the Study
Decision-making is among the most critical functions of organizational management. Decision-making has a decisive role in influencing the future of an organization and its success. However, the effectiveness of the decision depends on the mechanism applied in making the decision. Currently, organizations are vacuuming up data, to make the best decisions in all the organization’s undertakings, from hiring to product development. They are considering how they could be more efficient, smarter, and agile by applying the right data to achieve an effective and efficient decision-making (Manoharan, Melitski, and Bromberg, 2015). This concept is referred to as the research-driven decision-making, which a primary emphasis on the decision-making has centered on the research data, instead of intuition (Al-Salamah and Wilson, 2001). Researchers argue that the research-driven decision-making is vital and useful when the concerned organization has a large dataset, which is interconnected. This data should be time series, reflecting the past, current and future organizational performance. Among the new strategies of decision-making, it is critically important to explore the benefits that the concerned organization could gain from applying it. This constructs the basis of this dissertation, where it will focus on the gains of the research-Driven Decision-Making in Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) Investments. SABIC is a manufacturing company, which has active operations in chemicals, fertilizers, metals, industrial polymers and the chemical intermediates. It has a long period reputation of making its investment decisions, based on the research-driven decision-making technique. Being the Saudi Arabia’s largest public company, as well as the largest listed company in the Middle East, it prompts an investigation of the benefits of research-driven decision making to the company investments.
1.2 Research Aim & Objectives
1.2.1 Main Aim
The main aim of this dissertation is to evaluate the benefits of research-Driven Decision-Making in Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) Investments.
1.2.2 Specific Objectives
- To evaluate the SABIC’s growth since its establishment.
- To establish the changes made by SABIC to enhance competitiveness and sustainability.
- To ascertain the organizational strategic plan used by SABIC
- To determine the approach to adapt to new markets
- To determine SABIC’s inclination to invest in research.
1.3 Research Questions
The research will be geared towards answering the following questions:
- What is the growth of the firm since its establishment in 1976?
- What are the investment changes made by SABIC to enhance competitiveness and sustainability?
- What is the organizations strategic plan?
- What is the organization approach to new markets?
- What is the organization’s inclination to invest in research?
1.4 Research Approach
The deductive research approach will be adopted in carrying out the current research. The deductive research approach involves developing a research hypothesis (or hypotheses) based on the theories existing. Then it designs a research strategy, with an objective of testing the stated hypotheses. By adopting this research approach, the reasoning work will flow from a more general to a more specific work, or the top-down approach. This will start by thinking and conceptualizing about the topic of interest. The research will then narrow down to the most specific hypotheses, which will be tested. Further, the research will narrow down to data collection to use it to address the hypotheses. This ultimate will lead to the testing of the stated hypotheses through the application of the specific data, which will confirm, or fail to confirm the original theories. The structure of the approach is illustrated below.
1.5 Rationale/Justification of the study
Decisions making process and the decisions made in an organization determines the success of failure of an organization, be it a multinational or a small and medium enterprise (SME). More importantly, many business organizations are performing poorly, and others vacate the market due to ignorance on how to apply various decision techniques in their decision making process. These business organizations contribute a critical part of the economic development through various economic factors such as employment, tax, exports among others. Therefore,
their poor performance or failure is an as great concern in a nation. With the current rise of application of research-based decision-making strategy, it presents an opportunity to these organizations to adopt it, to improve their decision-making process, and their overall performance (Crick and Crick, 2016). This necessitates this study, which will evaluate the benefits that an organization could gain, by adopting the research-based decision-making.
Most of the part literature on the research-based decision-making focuses on how the research-driven decision-making could be implemented in an organization. However, no contribution has been specifically made to the benefits of applying the research-driven decision-making in the investment decisions (Brew, 2013). This is critically a huge gap because the organization
needs to be strategic when making their investment decisions. Therefore, this study is geared towards filling this gap, with specific concern to the Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) Investments.
The study will contribute significantly to the domain of organizational management. Specifically, findings will be beneficial to SABIC and other companies, as it will guide on the adoption of a research-based decision-
making strategy in their investment decisions. The academicians, on the other hand, will be furnished with relevant information on the benefits of the research-based decision-making approach. Additionally