New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition – Serie

The study of management and organization has transitioned from approaches to deal with steady state management, to approaches that can cope with unknown or unknowable futures. The strategy field has has moved from business policy, through strategic planning, onto strategic management and now grapples with dynamic contexts as the new normal. In that trend the field has seen a broad movement in research interests in corporate and competitive strategies towards an emphasis on the manager’s strategic role. Through this shift, strategy has moved from a concept of something organizations have towards something that managers do. This has happened while traditional boundaries of industries have become permeable and even melted away. Managers tasked with doing strategy have lost not just the certainty of a goal-oriented future, but also the certainty of understanding their current position. Decision-making tools have now moved from answer generators to scenario builders. When decisions can rely less on evidence and certainty, it is managers that take up the slack and fill the void. This book focuses on the challenge of making strategic decisions in conditions of uncertainty.

This book explores the methodological frontiers of managerial andorganizational cognition (MOC), an exciting and diverse interdisciplinary bodyof work that began with the publication in 1958 of JamesG. March and Herbert A. Simon’s classic work Organizations. Enteringits fourth decade, the field gained significant momentum following the appearance of Anne S. Huff’s (1990) book Mapping Strategic Thought, whichexplored the (then) methodological frontiers of MOC. The world has changed since then and so, too, have the methods available to MOC researchers; it is timely, therefore, to examine theextent to which the methods that were foundational to the development of MOC arestill fit for purpose.Taking stock of MOC’s many methodological accomplishments, the thought-provokingchapters comprising this second volume of the New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition book seriesset the agenda for the next phase of the field’s development.

Exploring the management of innovation is a largely interdisciplinary endeavour. It requires scholars to address problems from a variety of perspectives that include strategic, operational, technological and behavioural. The problem domain includes the management of innovation, technology strategy, research and development, information technologies, technology-based entrepreneurship, and the commercialization of scientific research. Behavioural theories of innovation have developed in multiple directions over the years, and this collection of chapters takes stock and provides examples of new developments at the intersection of innovation studies, and studies of managerial and organizational cognition. This is the third volume in the New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition series and comprises a collection of contributions that reflects the rich and encouraging developments at the intersection of cognition and innovation. The book explores the frontiers of socio-cognitive and socio-psychological research as it relates to innovation management and innovation processes. Major topics covered include attention, decision making, information processing, learning, cognitive frames, ecosystems and business model innovation, perceptual and interpretive processes, ethics and social dilemmas, power, and change.

The broad field of managerial and organizational cognition (MOC) has diversified over the years. Where early studies of MOC focused on theories of rational conscious thought, illustrated for example by schema theory, over the years we have seen explorations of unconscious processing, heuristics and cognitive biases, along with emotions, identity, and the 'darker' sides of cognition.Thinking About Cognition takes stock by reflecting on the frontiers of the field and addressing the future beyond our current state-of-the-art. The result is a collection of papers reflects emerging research in the field of cognition and considers developments in mindfulness, networked societies, neuropsychology, identity theory, team cognition, decision making, distant futures, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, change, and agency.This fifth anniversary volume of New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition comprises of a collection of contributions that discuss frontiers of MOC research, address the challenges we face, inspire other scholars, and provide guidance on how to proceed.

Strategy research and practice has a long tradition of using frameworks, models, tools, and processes to describe, and guide the strategy work of managers. These are the cognitive aids that guide cognition, i.e., the way managers make sense of the world. Why, and how, do these tools interact with cognition?The sixth volume in the New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition series examines cognitive aids in strategy. Cognitive aids of strategy have a profound impact on the way managers learn about, conceptualize, share, and enact strategy and strategies in their organizations, yet these aids are often presented without reference to the underlying cognitive theory that might explain why the aid is useful.Cognitive Aids in Strategy brings together contributions by twelve strategy scholars, reflecting on a range of cognitive aids and their theoretical foundations, focusing attention on the importance of cognitive aids in strategy, and inspiring further research. It represents a new horizon for the study of managerial and organizational cognition.