This study proposes an explanation for the accuracy of top management teams’ diagnoses of strategic issues. Key determinants are the number of members on the management team, as well as the span of managers’ attention and its allocation to the environment and to other managers. Depending on the nature of the issues faced, managers who reason analogically from past experience to draw inferences about current strategic issues may arrive at accurate or inaccurate diagnoses. We specify and analyze a multiple-agent model that encompasses individual, top management team, and context characteristics relevant to classifying strategic issues as opportunities or threats based on learning from experience. Results from our model indicate that attending to the environment improves the accuracy of strategic issue diagnoses, whereas attending to other managers’ inferences proves detrimental. Adding members can enhance issue diagnosis accuracy for a team that makes decisions according to majority-rule voting, despite leaving the accuracy of individual managers’ diagnoses unchanged.

这项研究为高层管理团队诊断战略问题的准确性提出了一个解释。关键决定因素是管理团队中的成员人数，以及管理者的注意力范围及其在环境和其他管理者中的分配。根据所面临问题的性质，从过去经验中类似地推理出有关当前战略问题的推论的经理可能会得出准确或不准确的诊断结果。我们指定并分析一种多主体模型，该模型包括个人，高层管理团队和与背景相关的特征，这些特征与基于经验的学习将战略问题分类为机遇或威胁有关。我们模型的结果表明，关注环境可以提高战略问题诊断的准确性，而参加其他经理的推论则被证明是有害的。添加成员可以提高根据多数规则投票做出决策的团队的问题诊断准确性，尽管个人经理的诊断准确性保持不变。