How Does Business Strategy Treat Cognition?

<p>Strategizing is a human cognitive activity. While this may suggest that business strategy would focus on human cognition, this thesis finds the opposite – that business strategy overwhelmingly treats cognition superficially, and that business strategy consequently is limited and underperforms. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn that places cognition at the centre of business strategy and thereby enables the enhanced research and execution of business strategy. To research the question “how does business strategy treat cognition?” requires an epistemology that admits cognition. Having found no such epistemology, this thesis creates its own – Pragmatic Cognitivism. A research method that is based upon the works of Michel Foucault, and which aligns with this epistemology, is adopted to analyse two mainstream business strategy discourses and two academic business strategy discourses. This analysis finds that business strategy, driven by Enlightenment thinking and human sciences, perceives itself to be the problem and creates a large variety of approaches to strategy and strategy solutions. The development of these approaches establishes both the discipline of strategy and the role of the strategist. The analysis concludes that business strategy often ignores cognition and, when it is considered, it is treated only as a side issue. Furthermore, strategy solutions are not cognitive solutions, tasks such as learning and designing strategy are not considered, there is no consideration of knowledge of strategy and strategy intentions, and the subconscious is rarely mentioned. Conditions that have led to this limited treatment of cognition include a scientific approach that does not easily cater for cognition and the complexities of understanding the mind. For business strategy, this has resulted in methodological approaches, a limited scope, and underperformance. Business strategy has developed in such a way that its own context is the limiting factor – business strategy cannot perform well because its core ingredient, cognition, is left untreated. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn in business strategy that makes cognition the centre of strategy discourses. This is not to wholly reject current discourses, but it is a fundamental shift in how business strategy is conceived, researched, and executed. By placing cognition at the centre of strategy interpretations, strategy can potentially develop higher levels of performance rather than being structurally constrained. The necessary starting point for such a cognitive turn is epistemological – to enable cognition to be well thought. Pragmatic Cognitivism is recommended as an epistemology that enables the reinstatement of the concepts of intuition and judgment, the inclusion of the subconscious as a cognitive factor, and the consideration of group cognitive dynamics. Such a cognitive turn is not an increased drawing of theory from contemporary psychology – it is a turn to concepts initially found in pre-behavioural approaches. This thesis seeks to understand business strategy in the present by exploring how business strategy has treated human cognition in the past.</p>

How Does Business Strategy Treat Cognition?

<p>Strategizing is a human cognitive activity. While this may suggest that business strategy would focus on human cognition, this thesis finds the opposite – that business strategy overwhelmingly treats cognition superficially, and that business strategy consequently is limited and underperforms. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn that places cognition at the centre of business strategy and thereby enables the enhanced research and execution of business strategy. To research the question “how does business strategy treat cognition?” requires an epistemology that admits cognition. Having found no such epistemology, this thesis creates its own – Pragmatic Cognitivism. A research method that is based upon the works of Michel Foucault, and which aligns with this epistemology, is adopted to analyse two mainstream business strategy discourses and two academic business strategy discourses. This analysis finds that business strategy, driven by Enlightenment thinking and human sciences, perceives itself to be the problem and creates a large variety of approaches to strategy and strategy solutions. The development of these approaches establishes both the discipline of strategy and the role of the strategist. The analysis concludes that business strategy often ignores cognition and, when it is considered, it is treated only as a side issue. Furthermore, strategy solutions are not cognitive solutions, tasks such as learning and designing strategy are not considered, there is no consideration of knowledge of strategy and strategy intentions, and the subconscious is rarely mentioned. Conditions that have led to this limited treatment of cognition include a scientific approach that does not easily cater for cognition and the complexities of understanding the mind. For business strategy, this has resulted in methodological approaches, a limited scope, and underperformance. Business strategy has developed in such a way that its own context is the limiting factor – business strategy cannot perform well because its core ingredient, cognition, is left untreated. This thesis recommends a cognitive turn in business strategy that makes cognition the centre of strategy discourses. This is not to wholly reject current discourses, but it is a fundamental shift in how business strategy is conceived, researched, and executed. By placing cognition at the centre of strategy interpretations, strategy can potentially develop higher levels of performance rather than being structurally constrained. The necessary starting point for such a cognitive turn is epistemological – to enable cognition to be well thought. Pragmatic Cognitivism is recommended as an epistemology that enables the reinstatement of the concepts of intuition and judgment, the inclusion of the subconscious as a cognitive factor, and the consideration of group cognitive dynamics. Such a cognitive turn is not an increased drawing of theory from contemporary psychology – it is a turn to concepts initially found in pre-behavioural approaches. This thesis seeks to understand business strategy in the present by exploring how business strategy has treated human cognition in the past.</p>

Moving Social Policy from Mental Illness to Public Wellbeing

In the face of global epidemics of mental ill-health, the future of social policy lies with promotion of public wellbeing. This article aims to provide an explanatory rationale and methods for a fundamental shift in social policy; away from a remedial focus on mental ill-health defined in terms of disease or aberrant behaviour and toward a focus on universal access to social conditions favourable to psychological wellbeing. The paper begins with prefacing argument about the urgent need for such a shift, noting the high rates of mental ill-health globally and the failure of current biomedical responses to reduce these. Building on recent theoretical work on public wellbeing and evidence on social determinants of mental health, the paper then proposes nine domains for social policy and broader public policy action, to create conditions supportive of wellbeing abilities. Finally, the paper presents several conceptual issues relating to the challenge of putting such action into practice and concludes that contemporary understanding of wellbeing offers a theory of change to shift social policy from mental illness to public wellbeing.

Pushing Social Philosophy to Its Democratic Limits

Roberto Frega’s Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy reformulates the question of democracy posed by our current historic conjuncture using the resources of a variety of pragmatic thinkers. He brings into the contemporary conversation regarding democracy’s fortunes both classical and somewhat neglected figures in the pragmatic tradition to deal with questions of power, ontology, and politics. In particular, Frega takes a social philosophical starting point and draws out the consequences of this fundamental shift in approach to questions of democratic and political theory. This turn to social philosophy as a theoretically more sufficient conceptual vocabulary, extended in detail by Frega, raises questions regarding the work that a social ontology does in clarifying the role of economic and political approaches to democracy that are worth further exploration. Likewise, the practical proposals for moving beyond methodological nationalism with respect to forming publics for the sake of problem-solving, while providing a clarifying and fresh starting point, are still too beholden to models of agency and expressions of coordinated action that themselves are the very fruit of those systems which undermine democratic power in the first instance.

Synergetic impacts of turbulence and fishing reduce ocean biomass

A universal scaling relationship exists between organism abundance and body size1,2. Within ocean habitats this relationship deviates from that generally observed in terrestrial systems2–4, where marine macro-fauna display steeper size-abundance scaling than expected. This is indicative of a fundamental shift in food-web organization, yet a conclusive mechanism for this pattern has remained elusive. We demonstrate that while fishing has partially contributed to the reduced abundance of larger organisms, a larger effect comes from ocean turbulence: the energetic cost of movement within a turbulent environment induces additional biomass losses among the nekton. These results identify turbulence as a novel mechanism governing the marine size-abundance distribution, highlighting the complex interplay of biophysical forces that must be considered alongside anthropogenic impacts in processes governing marine ecosystems.

1846: Canada’s First Inquiries Act

Historical accounts of commissions of inquiry in Canada make only passing reference to the seminal 1846 Inquires Act. None explore the provenance of this legislation beyond a few sentences of the most general conjecture. This paper contends that Canada’s first Inquiries Act was a by-product of a political crisis that grew out of the politics and institutional processes integral to the resolution of claims for rebellion losses in Canada during the 1840s. As the events associated with the passage of the 1849 Rebellion Losses Bill would disclose, this crisis posed an existential threat to the viability of the Union. The passage of the Inquiries Act, precipitated by the immediate contingencies of the rebellion losses crisis, marked for Canada a fundamental shift in constitutional authority dating back to 1688. The Act embraced methods of inquiry denied to the Crown since the late seventeenth century. Though created by a democratic legislature, the Inquiries Act revived a Crown-driven inquisitional approach to public inquires long since inoperative in Great Britain. The Act thus marked a shift in the relationship between state and citizen, and opened a new terrain for the long struggle to protect the individual against the all-powerful state.

Enabling people with impairments to use Airbnb

Paid peer-to-peer accommodation networks, including Airbnb, have been accused of excluding people with impairments. This study analyses host and guest posts on the Airbnb hosting community to (1) reveal key barriers preventing people with impairments from fully participating in peer-to-peer accommodation trading, and (2) identify solutions to overcoming these barriers, using as theoretical framework the social model of disability. The key conclusion is that we may be witnessing a fundamental shift in the nature of barriers: as the growing peer-to-peer accommodation sector increases the quantity and variability of accommodation options, the primary challenge is no longer a lack of suitable accommodation (physical barrier), but the identification of suitable accommodation (informational barrier). Informational barriers are potentially easier to overcome.

Advertisers and American Broadcasting: From Institutional Sponsorship to the Creative Revolution

American broadcasting, unique among media industries, relied on sponsors and their ad agencies for program content from the 1920s through the 1950s. Some sponsors broadcast educational or culturally uplifting programs to burnish their corporate images. By the mid-1960s, however, commercial broadcasting had transformed, and advertisers could only buy interstitial minutes for interrupting commercials, during which they wooed cynical consumers with entertaining soft-sell appeals. The midcentury shifts in institutional power in US broadcasting among corporate sponsors, advertising agencies, and radio/television networks reflected a fundamental shift in beliefs about how to use broadcasting as an advertising medium.

The Evolving Arctic in the World-System

Global climate change’s continuing effect on the Arctic has brought about a fundamental shift in the region’s identity as it becomes an ever more active area in the world-system. Economic opportunities such as new shipping routes and a bounty of natural resources that were hitherto ice-locked are becoming accessible as the pace of climate change quickens, garnering increasing attention from actors around the world-system. This article explores the new geopolitical and economic realities of the Arctic through the lens of world-system analysis by examining the region’s budding role in the world-economy and emerging economic opportunities, its unique core-peripheral nature, and its potential to spark a regional hegemonic rivalry between NATO and a Sino-Russian partnership. This article aims introduce the evolving Arctic to world-systems studies and promote further research on the region using the theoretical framework.

Overcoming Obstacles in the Development of Antigen-Specific Immunotherapies for Type 1 Diabetes

Antigen-specific immunotherapy (ASI) holds great promise for type 1 diabetes (T1D). Preclinical success for this approach has been demonstrated in vivo, however, clinical translation is still pending. Reasons explaining the slow progress to approve ASI are complex and span all stages of research and development, in both academic and industry environments. The basic four hurdles comprise a lack of translatability of pre-clinical research to human trials; an absence of robust prognostic and predictive biomarkers for therapeutic outcome; a need for a clear regulatory path addressing ASI modalities; and the limited acceptance to develop therapies intervening at the pre-symptomatic stages of disease. The core theme to address these challenges is collaboration—early, transparent, and engaged interactions between academic labs, pharmaceutical research and clinical development teams, advocacy groups, and regulatory agencies to drive a fundamental shift in how we think and treat T1D.