Abstract. Strategic decision -making process represents a challenge in a dynamic industrial environment. Nowadays, many instruments and techniques are used in the process of decision-making. The perspective regarding real options analysis (ROA), joint ventures (JVs) and strategic decision-making process (SDMP) is very important to be analyzed because it represents a key source to obtain competitive advantage in a turbulent environment characterized by competitiveness, dynamism and a proactive thinking. The aim of the paper is to offer an interesting framework that emphasizes the relationship between real options (ROs), JVs, transaction cost (TC), bargaining models (BM), agency theory (AT) and SDMP. Also, the paper analyzes a real case study and it suggests a business model that includes elements that conduce to an innovative management. The findings are very useful for decision-makers from organizations, researchers and students.

These days, the business environment is dynamic, volatile, uncertain and with multiple selfinterested agents interacting, leading to various opportunities for both conflict and cooperation to appear. Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage on market became important capabilities of a company. The aim of this paper is to investigate the efficiency of game theory in the decisionmaking process of companies from automotive industry. Game theory is a topic of modern applied mathematics. It uses mathematical techniques for analyzing situations when managers/competitors in the same segment make decisions that influence one another's interests/business. A key element in a game is to discover which strategy is a decision maker's best response to the strategies chosen by the others. The concepts of game theory involve the need to formulate, analyze and understand strategic scenarios of companies from various fields. The study's methodology is based on literature review, case studies and mathematical methods. After a suggestive literature review framework, the study presents applications which use different types of games in various conditions. The findings prove that game theory represents an important tool for decision-makers from the automotive industry in the field of strategic planning. The results are useful both in the market, for decisionmakers and managers of companies, as well as in the academic field, for students. Game theory is inspiring because the terms and ideology are simpler than those of other theories in this segment. Game theory uses mathematical models to look at how conflict and cooperation work together.