It's a Different World: A Dialog on the Attention-Based View in a Post-Chandlerian World

This essay integrates emotions into the attention-based view of the firm to enhance the theory’s explanatory power and open a generative path for future research. Organizational structures and communicative practices shape organization leaders’ and members’ emotions. These emotions influence their attentional engagement. Structures and communicative practices shape emotions via two main paths: (1) perceived issue or initiative characteristics, which influence organization leaders’ and members’ specific emotions toward the issue and initiative, and (2) the socially constructed context for interaction about the issue or initiative, which influences the emotional energy leaders and members associate with the issue or initiative. The resulting emotions influence attentional engagement over three time horizons: immediately in the triggering situation, recurringly after the triggering situation, and through the creation of additional structures and practices that influence attentional engagement.

Section: Emotions and Emotional Energysupporting

confidence: 85%

Emotions and attentional engagement in the attention-based view of the firm

Vuori

2023

“…The dynamic ABV adopted here encourages a less fatalistic perspective on corporate strategists. Consistent with the distributed agency implied by the dynamic ABV (Ocasio et al, 2023), Ericsson's corporate strategists overcame what initially seemed like a radical downgrading. Even in adversity, they were able to bend the pipes of attention at least somewhat to their own advantage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Bending the pipes: Regaining attention through reinvention and renewal

Plotnikova

Pandža²,

Whittington³

2023

Self Cite

Organizations’ attention structures are traditionally perceived as stable ‘pipes and prisms’ representing organizational communication and procedural channels. Changes in attention structures are typically attributed to top-down interventions. In this study we extend the ‘dynamic Attention Based View’ by demonstrating first that attention structures are plastic and second that they can be ‘bent’ through bottom-up adaptations of communication channels previously designed from the top. Using a single case study of the large telecommunication corporation Ericsson, we show how mid-level organizational actors manifest distinct forms of agency in reacting to adverse changes in attention structures: projective agency and iterational agency. Organizational actors regain influence over the strategy-making process through two practices: reinvention (the projective agency of adding new channels) and renewal (the iterational agency of restoring old channels).

“…Given its original emphasis on traditional big businesses, the attention-based view is not particularly well-suited to understand activities that occur beyond organizational boundaries (Ocasio et al, 2022). Crisis research has identified conditions that make crises more likely across operational, managerial, regulatory, and legislative levels-particularly when several such conditions align (e.g.…”

Section: Practices Interface Beyond Organizational Boundariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, all three of its core concepts have undergone substantial transformation. Take the organization: many of the most important organizations today no longer look like traditional big businesses (Ocasio et al, 2022). Organizations are instead more distributed and porous.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Toward an attention-based view of crises

Kudesia,

Lang

2023

This article develops the attention-based view of crises. Crises implicate the failure of structures that shape attention throughout a system and initiate attempts to transform these structures. As crises are so influential, case studies of crisis provide rich details from which to build theory. Synthesizing insights from 80 qualitative case studies of crises, we build a theoretical framework that revitalizes scholarly understanding of how structure and attention relate in today’s complex systems. This framework reveals how everyday social practices instantiate structure, compose systems, and shape the quality of attention, such that practices constitute both a source and solution to crises. Understanding the systemic nature of attention through practices might therefore advance our collective capacity to face crises. It also contributes more broadly to ongoing conversations about how to apply the attention-based view in today’s world, where important organizations look less and less like traditional big businesses, notions of structure implied by formal organization charts are diminishingly relevant, and the quality of attention matters more than its quantity.