The competent organization : a psychological analysis of the strategic management process / Gerard P. Hodgkinson, Paul R. Sparrow.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hodgkinson, Gerard P., 1961-

Contributor:

Sparrow, Paul.

Series:

Managing work and organizations series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Strategic planning.

Organizational effectiveness.

Physical Description:

xx, 412 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Buckingham, [England] ; Philadelphia, PA : Open University Press, 2002.

Contents:

1 The Cognitive Perspective Comes of Age 1

Managing in times of disorder 4

Strategy as 'content' versus strategy as 'process' 6

The nature and purpose of theory and research 7

The managerial and organizational cognition perspective 8

Origins of the managerial and organizational cognition perspective 11

The human information processing model of skilled performance 12

Heuristics and biases in strategic decision making 13

The non-rational escalation of commitment to a failing course of action 18

The conflict theory of decision making 19

Mental representations: schemata, cognitive maps and mental models 21

Enactment, sense-making and the enacted environment 25

Combining the computational and interpretive perspectives 26

2 Organizational Learning 32

The learning organization 36

Providing a values proposition and a logic for managing and organizing 36

Requisite managerial competencies for a learning organization 37

Organizational learning 42

Cognitive change and commonly shared understandings 49

Tacit knowledge and the competent mindlessness of the individual 51

Eliciting tacit knowledge: organizational knowledge creation processes 52

Communities of practice and collective learning 56

The problem of collective forgetting 62

Competency traps and progressing organizational simplicity 66

3 Distributed Cognition, Organizational Memory and Knowledge Management 72

Team mental models 77

Group information sharing (sampling behaviours) 79

Transactive memory (and transactive knowledge) 82

Cognitive consensus 85

Distributed cognition: networks of people and technology 86

Organizational-level knowledge structures and organizational memory 89

Strategic analysis and organizational memory 93

Linking organizational learning to knowledge structures 98

Organizational learning as mindful performance 100

Communication and knowledge management in learning organizations 103

Intra-organizational information markets 109

The problem of information overload 113

4 Competition and Cognition 122

Analysing the structure of business competition: insights from socio-cognitive theory and research 124

The nature and role of categorization processes in competitor definition 128

Competitive enactment and institutional isomorphism 133

Relational modelling, vicarious learning and social identification 137

Cognitive inertia 140

Challenges to prevailing wisdom: situated learning and the cognitive life cycle of market domains 142

Mapping mental models of competition as a basis for exploring micro-processes of strategizing within and between firms 145

Methodological limitations of empirical studies supporting the emerging socio-cognitive theory of competitive industry structures 145

The case for studying individual and sub-group mental models of competitor definition: the processual school revisited 148

Empirical findings concerning the extent of individual and sub-group differences and homogeneity in mental models of competitor definition 152

Section summary 156

Towards fusion: exploring the relative impact of task and institutional influences on managerial mental models of competitive industry structures 157

5 Strategic Cognition in Top Management Teams 160

The upper echelons perspective on top management teams 161

Evidence for the upper echelons perspective 164

Empirical studies linking top team diversity and organizational performance 165

Executive succession, managerial learning and strategic reorientation 168

Criticisms of the upper echelons perspective 170

Increased statistical controls and conceptual refinements 177

Recent studies incorporating direct methods of cognitive assessment 179

Exploring the determinants of executives' perceptions and beliefs about strategy 180

Exploring the consequences of executives' perceptions and beliefs 187

6 Managerial Competencies and Individual Level Factors 193

Locus of control 197

Need for achievement and flexibility 203

Individual differences in the processing of information 204

Intuitive and creative cognition 213

Intuition and cognitive maps 214

Intuition and the intelligent unconscious 219

The role of intuitive decision making 221

Intuition and insight 222

Creative cognition 228

Key debates on creativity 229

Implications 235

Sense-making and sense-giving 236

The emotionally attuned manager 240

7 Knowledge Elicitation Techniques and Methods for Intervention 247

Varieties of knowledge 249

Causal cognitive mapping techniques 254

Methods for eliciting and representing causal maps 254

Memory errors in causal mapping 259

Comparing causal maps 262

Causal mapping techniques as a basis for organizational intervention 264

Mapping techniques for revealing dimensional and hierarchical relationships among conceptual stimuli 266

Hierarchical taxonomic interview techniques 267

Similarity-based scaling and clustering techniques 269

Repertory grid and related techniques 277

Scenario-based intervention procedures 283

8 Conclusions and Future Directions 297

Validating key components of strategic competence at the individual level 300

The strategic up-side of selective processing 305

Understanding the implications of new forms of work organization 309

Competence, trust and the paradoxical need to trust in competence 312

Understanding the nature and significance of emotion 314

Refining the assessment of actors' mental representations and the modelling of the strategic management process 316

Exploring strategic management processes beyond the top team 321

Further cross-fertilization with adjacent fields of study 323

Validating the notion of strategic competence at the organizational level 330.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0335199038

0335199046

OCLC:

48131821