A Theory of Organizational Cognition

2010 ◽  
pp. 35-59
Author(s):  
Farley Simon Nobre ◽  
Andrew M. Tobias ◽  
David S. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Environmental Uncertainty ◽  
Organizational Systems ◽  
Environmental Complexity ◽  
Organizational Complexity ◽  
Organizational Cognition ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Cognitive Perspectives

Chapter III introduces definitions, premises, and propositions towards a theory of organizational cognition. It proposes principles about organizational cognition and thus it clearly distinguishes organizational cognition from the concept of organizational learning. It outlines the concept of hierarchic levels of cognition in organizational systems and thus it proposes cognition as an important element of the organization. It presents new definitions on organizations, environment along with the relations between them through cognitive perspectives. Such definitions include concepts of intelligence, cognition, autonomy, and complexity for organizations. It derives a definition of environmental complexity and it proceeds by introducing propositions about the relations between organizational complexity and environmental complexity. While the former is synonymous with organizational cognition, the latter is synonymous with environmental uncertainty.

Organizational Learning and Multiteam Systems

2019 ◽  
pp. 602-620
Author(s):  
Leslie A. DeChurch ◽  
Gina M. Bufton ◽  
Sophie A. Kay ◽  
Chelsea V. Velez ◽  
Noshir Contractor
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
Organizational Systems ◽  
System Perspective ◽  
Multiteam Systems ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Emergent States ◽  
Superordinate Goal

Multiteam systems consist of two or more teams, each of which pursues subordinate team goals, while working interdependently with at least one other team toward a superordinate goal. Many teams work in these larger organizational systems, where oft-cited challenges involve learning processes within and between teams. This chapter brings a learning perspective to multiteam systems and a multiteam system perspective to organizational learning. Several classic illustrations of organizational learning—for example, the Challenger and Columbia disasters—actually point to failures in organizational learning processes within and between teams. We offer the focus on intrateam knowledge creation and retention and interteam knowledge transfer as a useful starting point for thinking about how to conceptually and operationally define learning in multiteam systems. Furthermore, we think leadership structures and multiteam emergent states are particularly valuable drivers of learning.

scholarly journals Green Innovation in Environmental Complexity: The Implication of Open Innovation

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Ieva Meidute-Kavaliauskiene ◽  
Şemsettin Çiğdem ◽  
Aidas Vasilis Vasiliauskas ◽  
Bülent Yıldız
Keyword(s):  
Firm Performance ◽  
Open Innovation ◽  
Environmental Uncertainty ◽  
Environmentally Friendly ◽  
Maximum Level ◽  
Survey Method ◽  
Green Innovation ◽  
Environmental Complexity ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Innovation Activities

People have become more conscientious about the environment in recent years. Increasing environmental awareness drives customers to be more selective about environmentally friendly products and forces governments to adopt environmentally friendly policies. As a result, competition in the market becomes more challenging. Thus, companies cannot remain indifferent to adopting environmentally friendly strategies to be sustainable. In this regard, this study investigates the effect of green innovation on firm performance. We also examined whether the environmental uncertainty moderates the investigated effect. For this purpose, first, data were collected from the first 1000 exporting firms declared in 2019 by the Turkey Exporters Assembly using a survey method. Secondly, factor analyses and regression analyses were performed with the data set obtained from 136 companies. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that green innovation increases both environmental performance and economic performance. It also was found that green innovation positively affects firm performance, but environmental uncertainty reduces this effect. According to these results, it was offered that firms should increase their green innovation activities to achieve better outputs and seek ways to reduce environmental uncertainty to keep these outputs at the maximum level. Finally, the research includes some considerations on the positive implications and potential of green innovation in an open-innovation context.

scholarly journals Organizational Learning from Hidden Improvisation

2021 ◽  
pp. 017084062110355
Author(s):  
Allan Macpherson ◽  
Dermot Breslin ◽  
Cinla Akinci
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Middle Management ◽  
Fire Service ◽  
Organizational Systems ◽  
Qualitative Evidence

Research has identified improvisation as a creative and open activity that can be harnessed to encourage innovation and learning within the organization. In this paper, we present improvisation as a covert phenomenon, occurring in a climate of mistrust and fear of censure, and disconnected with wider organizational learning. Drawing on qualitative evidence of a UK Fire Service, we explore hidden improvisation, and identify the conditions and processes that can connect these local deviations to wider processes of learning. We show that whilst most improvisations remain hidden and contained to avoid wider scrutiny, certain conditions of frequency, connectedness, and scale escalate events to become more visible to supervisors and managers. The learning outcomes from these visible improvisations will then depend on management’s interpretation, evaluation, and translation of improvising behaviours. Dependent on prior relationships of trust and credibility, middle management perform a key brokering role in this process, connecting previously hidden improvisation to wider organizational systems and structures.

scholarly journals Technical innovation: trigger or threat for organizational learning? A curvilinear relationship revisited

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Teresa Ortega Egea ◽  
María Isabel Roldán Bravo ◽  
Antonia Ruiz Moreno ◽  
Carmen Haro Domínguez ◽  
Dainelis Cabeza Pullés
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Technical Innovation ◽  
Curvilinear Relationship ◽  
Organizational Complexity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Innovation Activities ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Very High ◽  
Curvilinear Effect

Purpose Although most research considers organizational learning as an antecedent of innovation, the relationship is complex and could be reciprocal. Therefore, more research is needed on the profit gained from the learning and organization acquires from its innovation activities. Using the concept of fit, this paper aims to investigate whether organizational learning increases when an organization’s technical innovation level exceeds that of its competitors (positive misfit), theorizing the curvilinear effect of positive technical innovation misfit on organizational learning. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses regression analysis with survey data gathered from 202 European firms. Findings The findings support the argument that positive technical innovation misfit has an inverted-U shaped effect on organizational learning. Practical implications The findings obtained should orient firm managers to developing a work environment that enables optimal levels of technical innovation and learning – levels at which the technical innovation developed drives learning among the organization’s members but avoids becoming trapped in the organizational complexity involved in very high levels of positive technical innovation misfit. Originality/value This study resolves conflicting views of the relationship between organizational learning and technical innovation and adds to the existing literature that indicates that proactive innovative firms can fail when becoming learners.

scholarly journals Shifting Boundaries in Professional Care

1996 ◽  
Vol 89 (7) ◽  
pp. 364-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Hopkins ◽  
Juliet Solomon ◽  
Julia Abelson
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Health Professionals ◽  
Modern Medicine ◽  
Organizational Complexity ◽  
Delivery Of Care ◽  
Professional Boundaries ◽  
Professional Care ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Shifting Boundaries ◽  
Effective Health Care

The nature of the work undertaken by different health professionals and inter-professional boundaries are constantly shifting. The greater knowledge of users of health care, and the increasing technical and organizational complexity of modern medicine, have partly eroded the control of health professionals over the substance of their work. The definition of a field of work as lying within the province of any one profession is culturally rather than scientifically determined. It is evident that care of good quality should be delivered at the lowest possible cost. This might include delivery of care by a less trained person than heretofore, or by someone with limited but focused training. Sharing of skills is a more sensible subject for discussion than transfer of tasks. We review a number of studies which show the effectiveness of inter-professional substitution in various care settings, and also the effectiveness of substitution by those other than health professionals. The views of users of health services on inter-professional substitution need to be considered. Health professionals and others need to work together to devise innovative ways of delivering effective health care. The legal issues need clarification.

When organizational complexity helps corporation improve its performance

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong Liu ◽  
Lu Ma ◽  
Panpan Huang
Keyword(s):  
Future Research ◽  
Environmental Complexity ◽  
Organizational Complexity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Corporation Performance ◽  
Complex Adaptive ◽  
Shape Curve ◽  
Theory Research ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the assertion that the relationship between corporation performance and organizational complexity follows an inverted U-shape curve, and a corporation gains the best performance when its organizational complexity fits its environmental complexity. Design/methodology/approach – This research did not directly measure environmental complexity to verify the relationship between corporation performance and complex environment, but measured organizational complexity to subtly display the effect of the organizational complexity on the corporation performance while controlled the environmental complexity. To do so, a set of corporations that shared the similar environment was selected, and then these corporations’ performance and organizational complexity were calculated, the related hypotheses were tested empirically. Findings – The paper proved the inverted U-shape relationship between organizational complexity and corporation performance, and also found that different corporation chooses different complex adaptive way, so the inverted U-shape relationship displays hierarchy. Research limitations/implications – Future research should search out to calculate corporation’s environment complexity the fitness of organizational complexity for testing hypotheses. Practical implications – The regularity of relationship between organizational complexity and corporation performance is helpful for managers to understand that a way to improve a corporation’s performance is to enhance the fitness of organizational complexity and environmental complexity. Social implications – Organizational complexity may be competitive advantage, but excessive growth of it will be harmful. Originality/value – Usually organizational complexity is thought of as a negative factor to corporation performance and tends to be constrained, but this research explored the role of organizational complexity to corporation performance and the findings helps managers to understand when to enhance organizational complexity and when to weaken it. The methodology of calculating the fitness of organizational complexity and environmental complexity by fixing environment is a contribution to complexity theory research.

Traditional Airport Performance Indicators: A Critical Perspective

2000 ◽  
Vol 1703 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Humphreys ◽  
Graham Francis
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Performance Measurement ◽  
Best Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Performance Measurement System ◽  
Measurement Systems ◽  
Commercial Activities ◽  
European Experience ◽  
Effective Performance ◽  
Definition Of

Airport managers require effective performance measures to enable them to plan and manage within the context of rapid passenger growth and the trend toward an expansion of commercial activities. Airport performance measurement in various ownership patterns from Europe and the United States is reviewed, bringing together a rich picture of different practices. The need to be aware of contingent circumstances to evaluate airport performance objectively is emphasized. Many measures currently in use are output variables and are usually quantitative and based on what is easy to measure instead of what is important to measure. The problems of discrepancies in the definition of key variables and of attempts to achieve direct comparability between airports are examined. Consideration is given to the dysfunctional effects of measurement systems and how they can be adapted to encourage innovation and organizational learning through such techniques as best-practice benchmarking. Airport planners, managers, and academics who have an interest in performance measurement and who wish to question the role of traditional measures will be interested in the discussion. Lessons from European experience in a postprivatization environment are considered. The research recommends the adoption of a performance measurement system for airports that examines processes as well as results and that considers antecedent variables as well as outcome variables. The conclusions indicate how airport planners and managers can gain new insight into the underlying processes behind quantitative indicators and how an understanding of these processes can stimulate organizational learning and innovation.

Performatywny charakter estetyki

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (26) ◽  
pp. 32-50
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Dziamski
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
Popular Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Louise Bourgeois ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Cognitive Perspectives ◽  
Making Art

Many lecturers of aesthetics feel that the subject of their lectures is not necessarily aesthetics, but history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, the British philosophers of taste and German romanticists. Does that mean that aesthetics feeds on its own past, is nurtured by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that inspire no one and do not open new cognitive perspectives? Does it mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, while its vision of art and beauty is outdated, invalid and totally useless? Aesthetics is a polysemous concept, which has never been sufficiently defined. It can determine a way of perceiving and experiencing the world that is specific for a given community, in other words, taste, yet it can also mean certain countries’ or regions’ contribution to aesthetic thought, to the aesthetic self-knowledge of man. Thus its dimension is practical, cultural and philosophical. Today aesthetics faces new challenges that it has to live up to; its major tasks include the defence of popular art, polishing the concept of aesthetic experience, aestheticization of everyday life and de-aestheticization of art, transcultural aesthetics and its approach to national cultures. In the book “Aesthetics: the Big Questions” (1998) Carolyn Korsmeyer reduces the main issues of contemporary aesthetics to six questions. The first question, old but valid, is a question about the definition of art. What is art? Nowadays everything can be art because art has shed all limitations, even the limitations of its own definition, and has gained absolute freedom. It has become absolute, as Boris Groys says. It has become absolute, because it has made anti-art a full-fledged part of art, and it has not been possible either to question or negate art since, as even the negation of art is art, legitimized by a more than 100 year long tradition, going back to the first ready-made by Marcel Duchamp in 1913. Today making art can be art and not making art can be art, as well, art is art and anti-art is art. The old question: “What is art?” loses its sense, and so does Nelson Goodman’s question: “When art?”. When does something become art? These questions are substituted by new ones: “What is art for you?”, “What do you expect from art?”. There can be a lot of answers, because defining art has a performative character. Louise Bourgeois has expressed the performative character of defining art in an even better way: “Art is whatever we believe to be art”. And for some reasons, which we do not fully realize ourselves, we want to make others share our belief.

scholarly journals Learning organization

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (10) ◽  
pp. 191
Author(s):  
Dang Thi Phuong Uyen
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Learning ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Learning Processes ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Learning Types

This paper reviews the learning organization/organizational learning literature in five main areas: first, the definition of learning organization vs. organizational learning and the difference between them; second, the levels of learning and learning types; third, the learning processes in organizations; fourth, the need for learning organization; and fifth, the image of learning organization. This paper aimes at stimulating Vietnamese institutions’ interest in the importance of learning in the success of organizations.

Performative nature of aesthetics

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (26) ◽  
pp. 32-49
Author(s):  
Grzegorz Dziamski
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
Popular Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Louise Bourgeois ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Cognitive Perspectives ◽  
Making Art

Many lecturers of aesthetics feel that the subject of their lectures is not necessarily aesthetics, but history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, the British philosophers of taste and German romanticists. Does that mean that aesthetics feeds on its own past, is nurtured by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that inspire no one and do not open new cognitive perspectives? Does it mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, while its vision of art and beauty is outdated, invalid and totally useless? Aesthetics is a polysemous concept, which has never been sufficiently defined. It can determine a way of perceiving and experiencing the world that is specific for a given community, in other words, taste, yet it can also mean certain countries’ or regions’ contribution to aesthetic thought, to the aesthetic self-knowledge of man. Thus its dimension is practical, cultural and philosophical. Today aesthetics faces new challenges that it has to live up to; its major tasks include the defence of popular art, polishing the concept of aesthetic experience, aestheticization of everyday life and de-aestheticization of art, transcultural aesthetics and its approach to national cultures. In the book “Aesthetics: the Big Questions” (1998) Carolyn Korsmeyer reduces the main issues of contemporary aesthetics to six questions. The first question, old but valid, is a question about the definition of art. What is art? Nowadays everything can be art because art has shed all limitations, even the limitations of its own definition, and has gained absolute freedom. It has become absolute, as Boris Groys says. It has become absolute, because it has made anti-art a full-fledged part of art, and it has not been possible either to question or negate art since, as even the negation of art is art, legitimized by a more than 100 year long tradition, going back to the first ready-made by Marcel Duchamp in 1913. Today making art can be art and not making art can be art, as well, art is art and anti-art is art. The old question: “What is art?” loses its sense, and so does Nelson Goodman’s question: “When art?”. When does something become art? These questions are substituted by new ones: “What is art for you?”, “What do you expect from art?”. There can be a lot of answers, because defining art has a performative character. Louise Bourgeois has expressed the performative character of defining art in an even better way: “Art is whatever we believe to be art”. And for some reasons, which we do not fully realize ourselves, we want to make others share our belief.

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