Individual Application Areas
By indicating the role (the style a person uses when aware of her/his behavior) and the operating (the style a person uses when not aware of her/his behavior) style the Decision Style model is a dynamic tool to develop individual managers and employees through for example:
- Post-Assessment to increase self-insight of decision and communication style career to support development of existing employees, such as various managers, specialists, project participants, expatriates, high-potentials, and trainees;
- Communication development to improve interpersonal relationships, leadership style and teamwork.
- Selection to new positions, projects, etc. can be partially based on matching the organizational needs of different Decision Styles, Complexity Motives and related competencies in certain situations and the Decision Style Profile of internal and external applicants.
Organizational Application Areas
By indicating relative strengths and weaknesses of different decision style culture components, the organizational Decision Style Culture is a strategic management tool for developing the organizational performance through, for example:
- Cultural Identification of how organizational members collectively behave and communicate;
- Subculture Comparison of possible differences and similarities between the cultures of different levels, units, countries, age, gender, mergers, and so forth in order to detect the cohesiveness of the culture as well as possible areas of complementarity, misunderstanding, or conflict.
Clients Using the Model
The Decision Style model has had many major customers during the more than 30 years of use. In Europe we have customers such as TetraPak, Fidelity Investment, MTSI, EnerSearch, European Investment Bank, ABB Network Partner, MTC, and Telia.
In the USA we have customers such as ARCO (Atlantic Richfield), Eli Lilly, EDS (Educational Testing Service), General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Korn & Ferry, NASA, Rockwell, UPS, Xerox, and several leading universities. It has also been used in many other countries outside Europe and the USA, such as Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore.
Application Examples
- Tetra Laval Prepared Food has used the model primarily for top management team development and sales training.
- Tetra Pak Data Systems has been using the model for top management team development, team-building, and internal information system services.
- Fidelity Investment's continental European HQ in Luxembourg.
- MTSI have been utilizing Decision Styles mainly for sales and marketing applications for especially Tetra Pak's Sales and Marketing Academy, where the model have gotten very high evaluations.
- EnerSearch is a R&D joint venture between IBM Utility and Sydkraft (Sweden's second largest utility) that explores new business strategies in the energy and IT areas. The research project ISES (Information, Society, Energy, Systems) which also includes ABB Network Partner, EDF, PreussenElektra, and IT Blekinge as corporate sponsors has been using the Decision Style Model since the start in 1996 for marketing and organizational applications as the common denominator of all four business research projects included in ISES.
- European Investment Bank in Luxembourg has certified parts of their human resource personnel. They use the model for team-building, internal services, human resource development, and project management purposes.
- ABB Network Partner has through its ISES sponsorship used Decision Styles for high-precision sales training.
- MTC is a Swedish center for marketing research and its dissemination that is connected to Stockholm School of Economics. MTC's corporate members includes most major Swedish multinational corporations.
- Telia is Sweden's former telephone monopoly. Their training and development unit Telia Kompetens has just launched its project leader course, which includes Decision Styles for teamwork, project, and marketing purposes.