Managerial Involvement in Investment Decision: A Study of Hydropower Enterprises

This study extends the extant scope of understanding investmentdecision, beyond the dominant ‘technical’ emphasison the application of discounted cash flow techniques. Theresearch methodology draws the positivist and interpretiveresearch paradigms. It uses a deductive approach, surveystrategy and principal component analysis for the analysis. Three key sets of factors emerged as important in the investmentdecision process in the hydropower sector. They are:group consensus (framing), influences on own judgment (heuristics),and application of knowledge & experience (intuition). The use of purposive and convenient sampling mighthave some unintended impact on the findings. Consequently,any generalizations of the findings to a wider population oforganizations and managers need to be made with care. It ishoped that this paper will encourage other researchers to gobeyond the analytic techniques of investment appraisal thathave dominated investment decision research and seek tobalance the emphasis by focusing on human involvement andbehavioral aspects of investment decision.