We concur that the managerial literature has been curiously silent about both
intent and emotion, and this is a plausible reason why the connection between
representations of cognition and behavior is often so tenuous. Further, we accept
the critique presented in this paper that almost all work on managerial cognition
(including much of our own) has tended to accept verbal statements at face value.
Johnson suggests a more sophisticated view, but we wish she had gone even farther
to suggest methodologies for MOC researchers who want to move from assumptions
about collective cognition to research on collectivity.
The final two papers in this issue study collectives while exemplifying two directions
for further research based on practical concerns. The first, by Annemette
Kjærgaard, reports on a longitudinal study of an organization that was forced to
change strategy due to declining revenues. The research explores the relative stability
of cognition through the lens of organizational identity, which turns out to
be a surprisingly stable concept.
Kjærgaard considers how organizational identity can dominate the cognition of
organizational participants, even though they experience a continuing mismatch
between their expectations and the actions of management. Her data suggest four
ways that different staff make sense of this dissonance. The evidence is that organizational
identity is not a stable set of constructs linked to a set of fixed behaviors,
which early work on organizational identity tended to assume. Nevertheless, a
pervasive organizational identity creates significant strategic inertia as it continues
to guide the behavior of the staff even though management behavior relates to a
new vision.
We are drawn to her metaphorical account of organization members describing
themselves as moving from “thinking spaghetti” to “living lasagna,” but this
paper, too, leaves room for further work. Figures from a single case study lead to a
theoretical explanation that is temporally sequenced, but more evidence is needed.
It is easy to criticize all case studies along these lines, yet surely the cycle can be
entered at any point. What then can cognitive researchers say to those who want
to shape intention in Johnson’s sense of the word?
The second empirical article, by Elaine Harris and Robin Woolley, reports on
experiments with cognitive mapping as a means of negotiating consensus around
what an innovating team does not know. The emphasis on uncertainty is a neat
reversal of most cognitive literature to date, which tends to analyze what is known
or what is assumed (often mistakenly from the researcher’s point of view). The
Harris and Woolley paper takes action research seriously, with explicit tests of its
adequacy using guidelines proposed by Reason and Bradbury (2000).