Cognitive attunement in the face of organizational plasticity

Abstract

PurposeThe paper aims to use part of the distributed cognition literature to study how employees cope with organizational plasticity, in an attempt to identify the characteristics of cognitive plasticity.Design/methodology/approachEvidence is collected by designing and implementing an agent-based computational simulation model (the IOP 2.0) where employees have the option to use external resources and the social environment to perform tasks. As plasticity is more effective when change and uncertainty are high, the simulation features an increase in the difficulty and number of tasks to which employees need to cope.FindingsCooperation and sharing of competence and ability are key to cognitive plasticity. Being able to master the use of some resources, together with other employees’ competencies, make some achieve the most efficient task performance.Practical implicationsThe findings suggest that under conditions of change and plasticity, human resource management (HRM) shall attempt to develop measures to support employees' cognitive skills necessary to cope with it, for example, mostly through diagnosis, training and facilitating on-the-job dialogue.Originality/valueThis is the first study that attempts a merger between organizational cognition and plasticity, and it is the first to match its results to HRM policy recommendations.

Quick-witted entrepreneurs versus systematic managers: a comparative analysis of decision-making competence

“…Recalling the seminal insights on bounded rationality of entrepreneurs and managers within the study of decisions in organizations by Simon, the present paper has followed traditional cognitive psychology approach to conduct an empirical distinction among such working figures in their DMC. Despite the large presence of literature from multiple disciplines (economy, management studies, cognitive psychology see Begley and Boyd, 1987; Busenitz and Barney, 1997; Cristofaro, 2017; Herath and Secchi, 2021; Secchi, 2021), addressing operational strategies and individual characteristic differences among entrepreneurs and managers is still welcome. This is more evident with respect to cognitive biases, and how entrepreneurs and managers are able to perform and make decisions by mitigating the effect of errors.…”