Is strategic decision comprehensiveness beneficial for firms? Despite significant empirical attention on this research question, inconsistent findings have prevented strong insights from being formed. To help the field move forward, we address long-standing controversies surrounding whether comprehensiveness is beneficial for firms, and whether environmental dynamism enhances or diminishes its effects. We meta-analyze 37 studies and provide the most definitive evidence possible regarding the strategic value of decision comprehensiveness. Our analyses show (1) that strategic decision comprehensiveness and organizational outcomes are positively related to a meaningful degree when subjective outcome measures are used, and (2) that environmental dynamism does not have a moderating impact on this comprehensiveness–outcomes linkage. Our results indicate that measurement strategies and methodological choices may have primarily driven the effects of strategic decision comprehensiveness reported in the literature. They also suggest that long-standing ideas related to moderating effects of dynamism do not hold. We define an agenda for future research and a roadmap for empirical efforts.
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