| The research is an examination of the relationship of organizational activities, decision-making style, strategic planning techniques, and Information Technology (IT) planning effectiveness. Managers depend upon these related factors to provide adequate information to make decisions that develop and guide a successful organization. Researchers indicate that a lack of strategic planning has decreased the effectiveness of IT systems in nonprofit organizations (NPOs). Therefore, the purpose of the quantitative, exploratory research is to analyze the effectiveness of strategic planning techniques in small to medium-sized religious NPOs that use various decision-making styles. The pilot study of 22 organizations, diverse in size and organizational structures, was designed to validate a web-based survey instrument. Once validated, the study expanded to include 183 organizations. The research identified these five strategic planning techniques: (a) complete planning, (b) the critical point, (c) the opportunistic aspect, (d) the reactive aspect, (e) and the routine aspect. The critical point style data, based on only 2 organizations, were statistically insignificant. The rational, intuitive, dependant, avoidant, and spontaneous decision-making styles reflect limitations of an uneven distribution of the organizations in the research. Ninety-four percent of the organizations have two styles, avoidant and spontaneous. Analysis of the decision-making strategic planning (DMSP) was limited by the distributions of decision-making styles. Sufficient populations occur in 8 DMSP pairs. The Spearman rho correlation between DMSP distribution and the planning effectiveness rankings produced a value of 0.5358 and a 2-sided p-value of 5.4204e-a5, which implied a possible correlation between a greater satisfaction rating and the planning techniques that require less long-range planning. Future research should be conducted in the distribution of decision-making styles in nonprofit organizations, the comparison of strategic planning techniques and decision-making styles of religious and non-religious organizations, and DMSP pairs to study the findings, conclusions, and limitations of the research. |
