Our study on strategic decision-making processes offers important implications for practitioners. First, the results contribute to the leadership context, as they have shown that the educational level of Greek CEOs has an effect on financial reporting and rule formalization. While, other results have demonstrated that the CEOs’ functional background and expertise does not affect any strategic decision-making process. The findings do show that Greek executives with certain demographic characteristics are more likely to pursue innovation strategies within their firms. For instance, board members with bachelor/masters’ degrees support innovation practices more strongly and board members with general management functional background tend to be more innovative than those with expertise in accounting. The fact that the demographic characteristics of CEOs do not predominately affect strategic decisions indicate that the corporate level decisions are not taken by single individual but by all the board members who are coming from diverse functional backgrounds and are equally involved in the strategic decision-making processes.
Secondly, the results indicate that formalised decision-making, accompanied by sound financial reporting activities, encourage innovation. To achieve financial prosperity, Greek companies are increasingly adopting a more flexible management style that is more akin to a team-based style of decision-making. Also there are various external forces, such as technological dynamics, EU obligations, and the economic expansion of Balkan countries that lead Greek firms to adopt more Western-type or professional styles of management. Greek boards of directors are requested to develop a more formal yet flexible decision-making process in order to introduce innovation strategies that are appropriate to their company’s situation. The importance of the significant relationship between the internal strategic decisions of financial reporting and rule formalization suggests that CEOs must foster innovative strategies by adopting specific decision-making processes. Thirdly, the existence of specific financial reporting activities and more formalized decision-making processes have encouraged the adoption of innovation strategies. The formal financial activities and rule formalizations have enhanced the confidence of stakeholders to invest in their organisations.