This book on uncertainty is the beginning of a series titled "New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition". We asked Frances Milliken and Gerard P. Hodgkinson, two well-known scholars who have made important contributions to our understanding of uncertainty to help introduce the effort. The brief bios found at the end of this volume cannot do justice to the broad range of their contributions, but our conversation gives a flavor of the kind of insights they have brought to managerial and organizational cognition (MOC). The editors thank them for helping launch the series with a decisive exploration of what defining uncertainty involves, how that might be done, why it is important, and how the task is changing. We were interested to discover that all five of us are currently involved in research that considers the nature and impact of uncertainty, and we hope that readers similarly find that paying attention to uncertainty contributes to their current projects. Working together, we can further expand understanding of organizational settings and effective action for both researchers and practitioners.

This book comprises the second volume in the recently launched New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition book series. Volume 1 (Sund, Galavan, & Huff, 2016), addressed the topic of strategic uncertainty. This second volume comprises a collection of contributions that variously report new methodological developments in managerial and organizational cognition (MOC), reflect critically on those developments, and consider the challenges that have yet to be confronted in order to further advance this exciting and dynamic interdisciplinary field. Contextualizing within an overarching framework the various contributions selected for inclusion in the present volume, in this opening chapter we reflect more broadly on what we consider the most significant developments that have occurred over recent years and the most significant challenges that lie ahead.

No abstract

In this brief introduction we reflect on the diversity of studies connecting cognition to innovation, and the enormous potential that exists for further research. Research streams on cognition in organizations, innovation in organizations, and intra-and entrepreneurship, have developed in parallel over the past decades, with frequent touchpoints, notably in terms of theories of cognition informing studies on the processes of innovation and creativity.Cognition theories have thus been considered micro-foundations of many theories of innovation. Here we outline the many ways that theories of cognition can yield insights for studies of innovation, and discuss the contributions of chapters comprising this third volume of New Horizons in Managerial and Organizational Cognition.

No abstract