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Cause Mapping in Strategic Management Research: Processes, Issues, and Observations
Abstract
Our primary objective is to provide method-related broad guidelines to researchers on the entire spectrum of issues involved in cause mapping and to encourage researchers to use causal mapping techniques in strategy research. We challenge strategists to open the black box and investigate the mental models that depict the cause and effect beliefs of managers, “walk” readers through the causal mapping process by discussing the “nuts and bolts” of cause mapping, provide an illustration, and outline “key issues to consider.” We conclude with a discussion of some promising research directions.
... Other researchers have used a more nomothetic approach (e.g. Gnyawali and Tyler, 2005;Laukkanen, 1998) and developed standardized concepts based on initial idiosyncratic concepts in order to facilitate comparison of various cause maps. Clarkson and Hodgkinson (2005) have developed a causal mapping software package called Cognizer™ using a completely nomothetic approach. ...
... [2] This method of cause mapping is commonly used in organizational research (e.g. Gnyawali, 1997;Gnyawali and Tyler, 2005;Huff, 1990). ...
... Thus, this mapping method sacrificed specificity in favour of generality and comparability. Because we were interested in comparing the maps across levels and functions, the use of standardized concepts was more appropriate (Gnyawali and Tyler, 2005;Laukkanen, 1998). Third, our research questions called for aggregation of managers' mental models in order to evaluate shared understanding. ...
Using the context of market orientation, we examine how an exemplary business's market orientation culture is reflected in managers' mental models, evaluate how mental models and perceived behaviours differ across hierarchical levels and functions, and compare the cognitive values and beliefs or the cognitive aspects of market orientation culture with behavioural aspects. Results from a rich, multi-method, case study suggest that while managers in the business share core beliefs regarding the customer dimension of market orientation, their beliefs regarding competitors, technology and inter-functional coordination dimensions vary widely across the levels and functions of the business. We found differences in terms of both the integration between the four dimensions of market orientation and the depth of knowledge within the dimensions. Our findings reveal that customer rather than competitor beliefs are the most important commonly shared beliefs in successful companies, leading us to encourage cognitive researchers to move beyond competitor analysis when examining managerial cognition. Another implication for future research is that a strong market orientation implies common core beliefs regarding customer dimensions but does not imply that all beliefs will be or should be shared. From the methodological standpoint, we find that cognitive mapping techniques provide rich insights into a business's market orientation culture that are not gained from behavioural methods alone. Copyright (c) Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2008.
... Causal maps may be considered as a special type of cognitive map, which illustrates one's mental model of the relationships among various elements in a cognitive system or knowledge framework (gnyawali & tyler, 2005;Scavarda, Bouzdine-Chameeva, goldstein, hays, & hill, 2006). Unlike other cognitive maps, causal maps are "representations of individuals (or groups) beliefs about causal relations" (Markóczy & goldberg, 1995, p. 306) and focus on the "phenomenological (concept base) and the causal belief dimensions" (emphasis original) in subjects' thinking (laukkanen, 1994, p. 340). ...
... to map these relationships, analysis was completed on the two students' long interviews, following general causal mapping procedure (gnyawali & tyler, 2005;Woodside, 2006). In reading the interview transcripts, all phrases that alluded to relationships, influences, thoughts, feelings, reactions, and experiences were flagged. ...
This article utilizes causal mapping technique to examine how influential psychological factors in one's judgment, both conscious and unconscious, contribute to tourist behaviors. Through analyzing qualitative data generated from extensive interviews of two US college students who participated
in study abroad programs in China, this research provides insight into the students' decision-making process, particularly influencers that affect these decisions when choosing the programs. Students' specific motivations, origin of perceptions, the strength of influential relationships, and
the ramifications of in-country experiences were also discussed. The study demonstrates the utility of causal mapping in deciphering tourists' thought processes. Further, the results provide insights and implications about marketing China as a study abroad destination for American students.
... Causal maps may be considered as a special type of cognitive map, which illustrates one's mental model of the relationships among various elements in a cognitive system or knowledge framework (gnyawali & tyler, 2005;Scavarda, Bouzdine-Chameeva, goldstein, hays, & hill, 2006). Unlike other cognitive maps, causal maps are "representations of individuals (or groups) beliefs about causal relations" (Markóczy & goldberg, 1995, p. 306) and focus on the "phenomenological (concept base) and the causal belief dimensions" (emphasis original) in subjects' thinking (laukkanen, 1994, p. 340). ...
... to map these relationships, analysis was completed on the two students' long interviews, following general causal mapping procedure (gnyawali & tyler, 2005;Woodside, 2006). In reading the interview transcripts, all phrases that alluded to relationships, influences, thoughts, feelings, reactions, and experiences were flagged. ...
... Other researchers have used a more nomothetic approach (e.g. Gnyawali and Tyler, 2005; Laukkanen, 1998) and developed standardized concepts based on initial idiosyncratic concepts in order to facilitate comparison of various cause maps. Clarkson and Hodgkinson (2005) have developed a causal mapping software package called Cognizer™ using a completely nomothetic approach. ...
Research shows that managers' cognitive structures influence their decisions and firm outcomes, and that managers' shared understanding is critical to new product success. Yet, little is known about the content and structure of managers' knowledge regarding their business's market orientation (MO) and how such orientation relates to new product development. By drawing from research on managerial cognition, we suggest that an examination of managers' cognitive maps of their business's MO can provide valuable insights. First, cognitive maps provide information regarding the relative ranking of concepts that managers consider important to new product success. Second, they offer insights about the relationship among concepts by illustrating the causal logic flow, centrality, and strength of the association between concepts. Finally, cognitive maps reveal a gestalt or pattern of managers' understandings. This pattern provides an overall view of their perceptions of their firms' MO. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to begin developing theory to explain the nature and extent of the sharing of managers' understanding of their business's MO across a company within the context of new product development.
We develop several theoretical propositions using established research on market orientation and an exploratory investigation of the cognitive maps of a stratified sample of thirty managers of a highly successful frozen food division of a multinational company. We argue that managers of innovative companies with a history of successful new products in moderately dynamic industries will have established market orientations, as reflected in cognitive maps, which emphasize customer orientations more than competitor or technological orientations. Moreover, we suggest that managers will consistently recognize the importance of interfunctional coordination because it influences the firm's orientations towards customers, competitors, and technology by facilitating sharing of important market information necessary for successful new product development. Furthermore, we propose that the division of labor and functional specialization in a company will result in predictable differences across cognitive maps of managers in different functions and levels of the organization. For example, senior managers are likely to have a more balanced and integrated MO than junior managers, due to their knowledge of organization wide issues.
The article also proposes an agenda for scholars interested in investigating the relationship between managers' cognitive maps of their company's market orientation and new product success. We note the importance of studying managers' cognitive structures in different types of industries over time, and how managers' cognitive structures may relate to their company's ability to learn. Managers could use cognitive mapping to recognize and evaluate beliefs that inhibit the sharing and interpretation of information between managers, departments, and levels and could design appropriate interventions.
The psychological analysis of strategic management issues has gained a great deal of momentum in recent years. Much can be learned by entering the black box of strategic thinking of senior executives and bring new insights on how they see, make sense of, and interpret their everyday strategic experiences. This chapter will focus on a powerful cognitive mapping tool called the Repertory Grid Technique and demonstrate how it has been used in the strategy literature along with how a new and more refined application of the technique can enhance the elicitation of complex strategic cognitions for strategy and Board of Directors research.
With the increasing importance of cognitive aspects in decision making, this research addresses how human cognitive abilities,
mainly situation awareness and mental models, can be used to drive the decision process in complex decision situations. Cognitive
orientation has long been regarded as an important consideration in the development and application of decision support systems
(DSS). Rather than cognitive orientation, a data-driven DSS emphasizes access to and manipulation of a series of company internal
and external data, compared to a model-driven DSS underpinned by statistical, financial, optimization or simulation models.
A business intelligence (BI) system is essentially a kind of data-driven DSS therefore shares the similar drawbacks with traditional
DSS. A framework of cognitive BI system is firstly developed. A model of cognition-driven decision process is then proposed
based on the system framework. In this framework and decision model, data retrieval, information filtering and knowledge presentation
are based on the tacit knowledge elicited from the decision-maker. The final decision is no longer the direct output of a
computer system, but the result of decision-making cycles of human-machine interaction.
We proposed a cognition-driven decision process model for business intelligence. In this model, a managerpsilas situation awareness (SA) and mental models are developed and enriched for naturalistic decision making based on traditional business intelligence systems. Mental models are also used to supervise the process of situation information retrieval and presentation. The final decision-making process is based on recognition-primed decision model.
This book covers a number of representative applications of intelligent decision support systems applications in society and policy support, including general methodologies, case studies, on-going R&D projects, and practical applications. These applications cover Intelligent Decision and Policy Making Support Systems ranging from risk modelling for policy making, consensus modelling in group decision making, fuzzy data envelopment analysis, cognitive orientation in business intelligence, personalized pedestrian navigation systems, knowledge based recommender systems, Web resource discovery and selection, machine learning based intelligent decision support systems, handling uncertain and qualitative information, fault diagnosis, safety analysis, radioactive waste management policy decision making, Belgian long-term sustainable energy strategy, to nuclear emergency management. Major contributions of this book are highly related to the well-established international FLINS series conferences on applied computational intelligence (1994-2008) on this topic and some current ongoing research projects at the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre (SCK•CEN) in Mol, Belgium.
Proposes a prototypical schema theory of memory. Such a theory assumes the operation of 4 central encoding processes: selection (a process that chooses only some of all incoming stimuli for representation), abstraction (a process that stores the meaning of a message without reference to the original syntactic and lexical content), interpretation (a process by which relevant prior knowledge is generated to aid comprehension), and integration (a process by which a single, holistic memory representation is formed from the products of the previous 3 operations. The supportive and critical evidence for these processes is evaluated in light of the need for any theory of memory to account for 3 fundamental observations; accuracy, incompleteness, and distortion. The central retrieval process of schema theory, reconstruction, is also discussed in this context. Evidence indicates that the memory representation is far richer and more detailed than schema theory would suggest. (6 p ref)
Presents a spreading-activation theory of human semantic processing, which can be applied to a wide range of recent experimental results. The theory is based on M. R. Quillian's (1967) theory of semantic memory search and semantic preparation, or priming. In conjunction with this, several misconceptions concerning Quillian's theory are discussed. A number of additional assumptions are proposed for his theory to apply it to recent experiments. The present paper shows how the extended theory can account for results of several production experiments by E. F. Loftus, J. F. Juola and R. C. Atkinson's (1971) multiple-category experiment, C. Conrad's (1972) sentence-verification experiments, and several categorization experiments on the effect of semantic relatedness and typicality by K. J. Holyoak and A. L. Glass (1975), L. J. Rips et al (1973), and E. Rosch (1973). The paper also provides a critique of the Rips et al model for categorization judgments. (44 ref)
Causal mapping has long been valued as a tool for exploring individuals’ idiosyncratic beliefs. in this paper we do three things to make these benefits more utilizable by researchers. First, by detailing a replicable elicitation technique, we lay the ground for systematic and objective comparison of these beliefs: Systematic analysis and comparison require systematic elicitation. Secondly, through a careful analysis of what a causal map means, we have been able to refine a way of comparing maps which uses all of the available information within the maps and is objective in the sense that all subjective aspects of the method are made explicit (e.g., the pool of constructs, the interpretation of missing information, etc.). Thirdly, we discuss and extend various tools for analyzing the distance based measures which the comparison yields. In addition, a brief example of the use of the method is sketched.
This study represents a first attempt to employ cognitive cause-mapping techniques to explore individual sensemaking during a planned organizational change. The authors evaluated the contribution of this method as a vehicle for exploring sensemaking processes during a change effort. Study data revealed that cause mapping generates a rich source of information, demonstrates a high degree of content validity, and is a particularly useful technique for capturing the dynamics of sensemaking. The study also provided needed longitudinal and structural analyses of cause maps. Results showed significant differences in cause map content over time without corresponding differences in cause map structure. An integrated model of sensemaking during organizational change is offered.
Organizational renewal requires that a firm's top managers make timely adjustments in their mental models following significant changes in the environment. Our initial propositions about the difference between renewal and decline focused on whether similar organizations in similar contexts differ in their ability to recognize significant changes in their environments. Analysis of longitudinal data from a matched pair of U.S. railroads suggested, however, that renewal hinges not so much on noticing new conditions, but on being able to link environmental change to corporate strategy and to modify that linkage over time. In the successful company we studied organizational renewal is a continuous process of first and second order changes in cognitive maps.
This article explores how the mental models of organizational strategists determine perceptions of competing organizations and responses to competitive conditions. We first outline a cognitive perspective for discussing competitive strategy, and then use this framework to analyse the particular case of the Scottish knitwear industry. We show how the structure of that industry both determines and is determined by managerial perceptions of the environment. We conclude by drawing out a few general implications of our framework for research and theory on competitive strategy.
Current research suggests that organizational learning (OL) occurs through different processes and describes various types of learning that are used in organizations. What is unclear, though, is what circumstances prompt an organization to engage in one learning process or the other. Equally confusing is the underlying relationship between learning processes and the types of learning. To address these issues, we develop a contingency model of organizational learning and suggest that perception of the environment influences the use of learning processes. We also show that differential emphasis on learning processes results in different types of learning. Our conceptual model connects perceptions of the environment, learning processes, and types of learning. The contingency framework offered in this article provides a more holistic perspective of OL and has implications for future research and management practice.
Many organizations aspire to gain collaborative advantage by working in partnerships across organizational, sectoral, and even national boundaries. Such collaborations, however, are difficult to manage, and the likelihood of disappointing outputs is high. To create advantage, practitioners need to engage in a continuous process of nurturing the collaborative processes. One issue that appears significant in the nurturing process is trust. This article incorporates a synthesis of research on trust with research on other aspects of collaboration. It develops a trust-building loop and examines its validity to inform practice. It argues that trust building is problematic and that management of trust implies both the ability to cope in situations where trust is lacking and the ability to build trust in situations where this is possible. It summarizes pragmatic implications in a tool for thinking about and addressing trust management in different collaborative situations.
Increasingly, thoughtful managers recognize the role of knowledge and learning in corporate action and performance. Concurrently, a new field, management and organization cognition (MOC), has emerged producing useful insights and findings. Thus far, empirical studies have largely focused on single cases or actors, using often archival data and sometimes ambiguous methods. To advance the field will require pragmatic tools for eliciting data on thinking in real organizations and for conducting rigorous and more comparative studies of management and organization cognitions.
This paper describes a method for comparatively studying real-life managerial thinking, defined here as the respective manager's beliefs about key phenomena and their efficacy links in their strategic and operative situation. The applicability of such a definition will depend on the requirements of research at hand. The payoff is that, thus defined, key elements in managerial and organizational cognitions can be usefully captured by cognitive mapping, an established approach in MOC research.
The approach contains, first, a method for eliciting comparison-enabling interview data of several subjects. Then, using researcher-based, interpretive standardization of the individual natural discourses, databases of standard concepts and causal links, constituting the cause map elements, are distilled. This facilitates a text-oriented description of the thinking patterns of single actors like managers or organizational groups, which can be used in traditional-type mapping studies, which typically assume unitary or quasi-unitary actors. However, the method is intended for comparative analyses, e.g., for pinpointing the cognitive differences or similarities across organizational actors or for constructing and comparing groups, assumed cognitively homogenous. Also, it is applicable for longitudinal studies or aggregated, e.g., industry-level, descriptions of MOC. A PC application is available for the technique, although many of the processing tasks are amenable to general-purpose relational database software.
The paper presents a study case comparing the cognitive structures of managers in two interrelated industries in terms of their concept bases and causal beliefs. The objective was to understand the substance of management thinking, as well as the formative logic behind how managers come to think in the shared ways. It is shown that patterns of industry-typical core causal thinking, manifestations of a dominant logic or recipe, can be located, operationalized and comparatively analyzed with this method. Substantively, the contents of management thinking are typically products of complex long-term mechanisms. These consist, first, of organizational problem-solving, recurrently facing a specific, adequately stable constellation of strategic tasks and environment elements, similar within industries and systematically different across them, and, second, of various social processes, which directly transfer and influence management thinking. The paper concludes with discussing the cause mapping method and suggests some options for further studies.
Several generally untested assumptions about strategic judgment and choice exist in strategic management theories. Direct examination of these assumptions is necessary for sound theory building, and for sound prescription based on current theory. This paper presents techniques for eliciting and analyzing the strategic judgments of strategy makers, and discusses the potential of these techniques for increasing the internal validity and practical relevance of strategy research. We argue that incorporating managerial judgment more directly into the mainstream of strategy research will lead to both new theory and the extension of existing theory.
Different perspectives of strategic decision-making and outcomes have been advanced in the literature. Among those are the rational normative, external control, and strategic choice models. The current research examined hypothesized effects of factors associated with these three perspectives on strategic acquisition decisions. Strong support was found for the rational/analytical normative choice perspective with objective criteria explaining the greatest amount of total explained variance in evaluation of target firms. However, industry and executive characteristics also produced main effects on target firm evaluations. Furthermore, the strategic decision models were found to vary by industry and executive characteristics of age, educational degree type, amount and type of work experience, and level (CEO and below). The results suggest that strategic decision models are quite complex with significant implications for future research and for strategic decision-making.
The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. A brand is said to have positive (negative) customer-based brand equity when consumers react more (less) favorably to an element of the marketing mix for the brand than they do to the same marketing mix element when it is attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service. Brand knowledge is conceptualized according to an associative network memory model in terms of two components, brand awareness and brand image (i.e., a set of brand associations). Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory. Issues in building, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity are discussed, as well as areas for future research.
Ever since Hambrick and Mason suggested that external individual characteristics can be used as substitutes for individuals' cognitive bases, management researchers have been using these characteristics as proxies for cognition. However, the actual evidence for a relationship between cognitive bases and individual characteristics is equivocal at best. My study of 91 managers showed a relationship between some of the most cited characteristics and beliefs, but I argue that such a finding does not support substituting characteristics for cognition.
The author presents a conceptual model of brand equity from the perspective of the individual consumer. Customer-based brand equity is defined as the differential effect of brand knowledge on consumer response to the marketing of the brand. A brand is said to have positive (negative) customer-based brand equity when consumers react more (less) favorably to an element of the marketing mix for the brand than they do to the same marketing mix element when it is attributed to a fictitiously named or unnamed version of the product or service. Brand knowledge is conceptualized according to an associative network memory model in terms of two components, brand awareness and brand image (i. e., a set of brand associations). Customer-based brand equity occurs when the consumer is familiar with the brand and holds some favorable, strong, and unique brand associations in memory. Issues in building, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity are discussed, as well as areas for future research.
Causal mapping has long been valued as a tool for exploring individuals' idiosyncratic beliefs. In this paper we do three things to make these benefits more utilizable by researchers. First, by detailing a replicable elicitation technique, we lay the ground for systematic and objective comparison of these beliefs: Systematic analysis and comparison require systematic elicitation. Secondly, through a careful analysis of what a causal map means, we have been able to refine a way of comparing maps which uses all of the available information within the maps and is objective in the sense that all subjective aspects of the method are made explicit (e.g., the pool of constructs, the interpretation of missing information, etc.). Thirdly, we discuss and extend various tools for analyzing the distance based measures which the comparison yields. In addition, a brief example of the use of the method is sketched.
Research shows that managers' cognitive structures influence their decisions and firm outcomes, and that managers' shared understanding is critical to new product success. Yet, little is known about the content and structure of managers' knowledge regarding their business's market orientation (MO) and how such orientation relates to new product development. By drawing from research on managerial cognition, we suggest that an examination of managers' cognitive maps of their business's MO can provide valuable insights. First, cognitive maps provide information regarding the relative ranking of concepts that managers consider important to new product success. Second, they offer insights about the relationship among concepts by illustrating the causal logic flow, centrality, and strength of the association between concepts. Finally, cognitive maps reveal a gestalt or pattern of managers' understandings. This pattern provides an overall view of their perceptions of their firms' MO. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to begin developing theory to explain the nature and extent of the sharing of managers' understanding of their business's MO across a company within the context of new product development. We develop several theoretical propositions using established research on market orientation and an exploratory investigation of the cognitive maps of a stratified sample of thirty managers of a highly successful frozen food division of a multinational company. We argue that managers of innovative companies with a history of successful new products in moderately dynamic industries will have established market orientations, as reflected in cognitive maps, which emphasize customer orientations more than competitor or technological orientations. Moreover, we suggest that managers will consistently recognize the importance of interfunctional coordination because it influences the firm's orientations towards customers, competitors, and technology by facilitating sharing of important market information necessary for successful new product development. Furthermore, we propose that the division of labor and functional specialization in a company will result in predictable differences across cognitive maps of managers in different functions and levels of the organization. For example, senior managers are likely to have a more balanced and integrated MO than junior managers, due to their knowledge of organization wide issues. The article also proposes an agenda for scholars interested in investigating the relationship between managers' cognitive maps of their company's market orientation and new product success. We note the importance of studying managers' cognitive structures in different types of industries over time, and how managers' cognitive structures may relate to their company's ability to learn. Managers could use cognitive mapping to recognize and evaluate beliefs that inhibit the sharing and interpretation of information between managers, departments, and levels and could design appropriate interventions.
Strategic learning aims to generate learning in support of future strategic initiatives that will, in turn, foster knowledge asymmetries that can lead to differences in organizational performance. From a case study of a unique organization whose purpose is to facilitate strategic knowledge distillation, it was found that this process is characterized by targeted information gathering that relies on diverse experts for interpretation as well as validation. It also embodies the organizational capability to leverage information technologies in the distillation effort, integrating them with processes for generating, storing, and transporting rich, de-embedded knowledge across multiple levels of the organization. As a result of the case study, a model of the strategic learning is developed and a series of propositions regarding its context and processes are presented based on this model. The model highlights key dimensions of strategic learning that suggest design parameters for organizations building strategic learning systems.
Interest in the field of managerial and organizational cognition has been intense over the last few years. This book explores and provides an in-depth overview of the latest developments in the area and presents answers to the questions accompanying its growth: Is the field distinctive? How does it extend our understanding of managerial processes? From different disciplinary perspectives and empirical settings, the contributors study patterns of managerial cognition. In particular, the longitudinal approach reflected in the volume contributes to its impact as a grounded, practice-based analysis of cognition in organizations.
The present study evaluates two alternative causal cognitive mapping procedures that exemplify key differences among a number of direct elicitation techniques currently in use in the organizational strategy field: pairwise evaluation of causal relationships and a freeh and approach. The pairwise technique yielded relatively elaborate maps, but participants found the task more difficult, less engaging, and less representative than the freeh and approach. Implications for the choice of procedures in interventionist and research contexts are considered.
The authors seek to understand which of three different strategic orientations of the firm (customer, competitive, and technological) is more appropriate, when, and why it is so in the context of developing product innovations. They propose a structural model of the impact of the strategic orientation of the firm on the performance of a new product. The results provide evidence for best practices as follows: (1) A firm wishing to develop an innovation superior to the competition must have a strong technological orientation; (2) a competitive orientation in high-growth markets is useful because it enables firms to develop innovations with lower costs, which is a critical element of success; (3) firms should be consumer- and technology-oriented in markets in which demand is relatively uncertain - together, these orientations lead to products that perform better, and the firm will be able to market innovations better, thereby achieving a superior level of performance; and (4) a competitive orientation is useful to market innovations when demand is not too uncertain but should be de-emphasized in highly uncertain markets.
A causal cognitive map is a directed network representation of an individual's beliefs concerning a particular domain at a point of time. The nodes and the arcs joining them indicate causal beliefs. There have been few attempts to develop quantitative measures for such maps. The measures could be used to compare the maps of different individuals and also to track the changes in the beliefs of a single individual over time. They would assist in providing a more objective basis for qualitative analysis. In this paper we review current cognitive mapping research and then propose some measures for computing the difference between two maps, illustrating this work with a managerial example.
This article describes a theoretical and empirical study of the Utrecht Jazz Orchestra. The research represents a radically new approach to organization analysis, based on a study of the participants' cause maps. We begin the analysis by ranking the variables of the average cause map and then, using these ranks, unfold the map into a content-free graph called an etiograph. This unfolding corresponds to an ordering of the variables interpretable in terms of organizations. The location of the variables in the etiograph has a strong association with the level of the participants' perceived influence over the situation, as well as with the number of logical inconsistencies in the participants' construction of the situation. Moreover, etiographic analysis ranks variables plausibly in a sequence of three clusters of givens, means, and ends. The analysis also covers the effect of requesting knowledge known with certainty, as well as the extent of the congruence between the participants' and an observer's conceptions of the setting. Finally, cross-validation analysis, using a holdout sample, supports the major findings.
Research shows that managers' cognitive structures influence their decisions and firm outcomes, and that managers' shared understanding is critical to new product success. Yet, little is known about the content and structure of managers' knowledge regarding their business's market orientation (MO) and how such orientation relates to new product development. By drawing from research on managerial cognition, we suggest that an examination of managers' cognitive maps of their business's MO can provide valuable insights. First, cognitive maps provide information regarding the relative ranking of concepts that managers consider important to new product success. Second, they offer insights about the relationship among concepts by illustrating the causal logic flow, centrality, and strength of the association between concepts. Finally, cognitive maps reveal a gestalt or pattern of managers' understandings. This pattern provides an overall view of their perceptions of their firms' MO. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to begin developing theory to explain the nature and extent of the sharing of managers' understanding of their business's MO across a company within the context of new product development.
We develop several theoretical propositions using established research on market orientation and an exploratory investigation of the cognitive maps of a stratified sample of thirty managers of a highly successful frozen food division of a multinational company. We argue that managers of innovative companies with a history of successful new products in moderately dynamic industries will have established market orientations, as reflected in cognitive maps, which emphasize customer orientations more than competitor or technological orientations. Moreover, we suggest that managers will consistently recognize the importance of interfunctional coordination because it influences the firm's orientations towards customers, competitors, and technology by facilitating sharing of important market information necessary for successful new product development. Furthermore, we propose that the division of labor and functional specialization in a company will result in predictable differences across cognitive maps of managers in different functions and levels of the organization. For example, senior managers are likely to have a more balanced and integrated MO than junior managers, due to their knowledge of organization wide issues.
The article also proposes an agenda for scholars interested in investigating the relationship between managers' cognitive maps of their company's market orientation and new product success. We note the importance of studying managers' cognitive structures in different types of industries over time, and how managers' cognitive structures may relate to their company's ability to learn. Managers could use cognitive mapping to recognize and evaluate beliefs that inhibit the sharing and interpretation of information between managers, departments, and levels and could design appropriate interventions.
Although the ideas of F.W. Taylor have profoundly marked the twentieth century, they do not seem to have been understood in the same way by the people who have studied them. Aims to enrich our understanding of the ideas of this remarkable author. Proposes a graphic representation of Taylor’s thinking in the form of a cognitive map. Then analyses the structure and content of the map using the Decision Explorer software package. Most of the concepts and links shown in the map were drawn from “Shop management”, and the remainder were taken from The Principles of Scientific Management. The results highlight the relative importance of the concepts used by Taylor, the dimensions on which he more or less consciously structured his thinking, together with the characteristics of the concepts he considered basically as “explanations” or “consequences”, and the more or less systemic or circular logic that guided him in the organization of his thinking. Discusses the limitations of the results and some future avenues for research.
Describes Karl E. Weick's role in developing organizational communication research and illustrates how others have adopted and utilized some of his pivotal concepts. Summarizes ways in which ongoing research has enhanced understanding of organizing as communicating, organizing as sense-making, and organizational culture. (SG)
The study of cognition in organizations has burgeoned in recent years. Top-down information processing theory suggests that individuals create knowledge structures to help them process information and make decisions. While the benefits of employing such knowledge structures are widely noted, there is a growing concern that they can limit decision makers’ abilities to understand their information environments and thus, compromise their decision making. This issue has captured the imagination of managerial and organizational cognition researchers. To date, their inquiry has been eclectic in focus and method. To order and advance this work, the author reviews extant research on the developmental origins and decision consequences of both the content and structure of knowledge structures at multiple levels of analysis. A host of research challenges are identified to help develop a better understanding of knowledge structure representation, development, and use in organizations.
Product innovation is increasingly valued as a key component of the sustainable success of a business's operations. As a result, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of studies directed at explicating the drivers of new product success. To help managers and researchers synthesize this growing body of evidence, the authors conduct a meta-analysis of the new product performance literature. Of the 24 predictors of new product performance investigated, product advantage, market potential, meeting customer needs, predevelopment task proficiencies, and dedicated resources, on average, have the most significant impact on new product performance. The authors also find that the predictor-performance relationships can vary by measurement factor (e.g., the use of multi-item scales, subjective versus objective measures of performance, senior versus project management reporting, time elapsed since product introduction) or contextual factor (e.g., services versus goods, Asian versus North American markets, competition in high-technology versus low-technology markets). They discuss the implications of these findings and offer directions for further research.
Discusses man's capabilities and limitations as an element in a closed loop control system under normal environmental conditions. Factors considered include the nature of manual control, modes of tracking, mathematical models of human operators, and characteristics of controls and displays in tracking tasks. (21/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This article explores the linkages between cognitive science and strategic management research. It begins by noting that Schendel and Hofer, in their classic work Strategic Management: A New View of Business Policy and Planning, implicitly assumed a cognitive basis for much of the strategy-making process but did little to systematize a cognitive approach. Next, the article examines the foundations of modern cognitive science. Several areas of recent research that are particularly relevant to strategic thinking are reviewed. The article concludes with a call for a more explicit cognitive emphasis in strategic management.
In this paper, CEOs are considered as ‘cognizers’ charged with integrating views in the top management team; a role which should require high cognitive complexity especially in diversified multinational corporations. A methodology for studying top managers' cognitive complexity is described and then applied to a sample of 26 CEOs. The CEOs' cognitive maps of the structure and of the dynamics of their industry are analyzed in terms of their degree of complexity, in relation to the breadth of the business portfolio of the firm, its geographic scope and the links the firm has with foreign parents. The results of this exploratory test generally confirm the principle of requisite cognitive complexity, and reveal a new set of more precise hypotheses linking particular dimensions of the scope of the firm with particular dimensions of CEOs' cognitive complexity.
Researchers have only begun to provide explanations of how top executives' experiences and perceptions influence organizational decisions. Drawing from a broad theoretical base, this study tests the contention that top executives' personal experiences (age, educational background, and work experience), their perceptions of their firms' attitudes toward technology and risk, and their perceptions regarding their firms' past success with collaborative technological development influence their cognitive assessments of potential technological alliances. Results from the study suggest that top executives with a technical education place more weight on the opportunities provided by the alliance than those with other types of education. Moreover, executives from firms that are perceived to emphasize technology and to have had success with technological alliances in the past tend to focus more on the opportunities provided by the alliance and less on the riskiness of the venture. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd
Cause maps are coded following many different conventions. It is therefore arguable that there can be no general approach to their analysis. Indeed the interpretation and meaning of the analysis can only be undertaken in relation to both the purpose of the research and the theoretical basis of the form of representation to be analysed, be it a cause map, network, or any other graphical picture. Given these reservations, this article outlines a number of techniques for the analysis of cause maps.
In order to make the arguments about cause-map analyses concrete, the article suggests what the various analyses described might imply for an understanding and evaluation of cognitive complexity. It does not address the difficult issue relating to the status of cognitive complexity as measured in these ways but rather simply notes that they are each as plausible or more plausible than many others that are often used. Ultimately the measures are to be taken as a portfolio of indicators of the complexity of the map itself.
This paper offers a refined conceptualization of consensus formation and demonstrates in three organizations how this conceptualization enables us to uncover new patterns of consensus building. It describes a longitudinal study which investigated consensus formation in three organizations undergoing major strategic change. The study explored whether consensus building occurred during the strategic change and, if so, how. Initial participants of consensus were also investigated as well as changes in the scope of participants in consensus. Consensus building did occur, but contrary to some views less through an increase in the strength of consensus and more through an increase in the scope of consensus. Additionally, initial consensus was not located among members of the top management team, but more within an interest group whose members benefited from the given direction of the change. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
There is general consensus in the strategy literature that successful firms alter strategy to address changes in their environments and enact more favourable conditions. Studies of organizational change suggest that this adjustment is not always made in a timely manner. Different beliefs about cause and effect have been established as a plausible explanation for differential responses to environmental change. This exploratory study of six pharmaceutical firms suggests more specifically that multiple concepts associated with environmental changes must be directly linked to organizational performance before new strategies are initiated. The results emphasize the importance of stress as a precursor to strategic response and have implications for the way we conceptualize `response' when referring to significant changes in strategy.
This paper presents an approach to cause mapping that has been developed for the purpose of helping managers improve their decision-making in complex tasks in ever-changing environments. Requirements for cause mapping for such a purpose are discussed, and our approach to theory-driven construction and analysis of cause maps is proposed. Use of the approach for advising managers is illustrated with an example from shipping investments. Research challenges are highlighted.