Ocasio, W. (1997) Towards an attention-based view of the firm.

Question 1

GOAL

Answer 1

Explain firm behaviour based on attention within the firm

Organizations as systems of distributed attention

Question 2

Attention =

Answer 2

to encompass the noticing, encoding, interpreting, and focusing of time and effort by organizational decision-makers on both
a) issues; the available repertoire of categories for making sense of the environment: problems, opportunities, and threats;
b) answers: the available repertoire of action alternatives: proposals, routines, projects, programs, and procedures

Question 3

Principles:

Answer 3

1) Focus of Attention – What decision-makers do depends on what issues and answers they focus their attention on
> Focused attention + controlled or automatic processing. New vs experienced driver
2) Situated Attention – What issues and answers decision-makers focus on, and what they do, depends on the particular context or situation they find themselves in
> Litter vs no-litter example
3) Structural Distribution of Attention – What particular context or situation decision makers find themselves in, and how they attend to it, depends on how the firm’s rules, resources, and social relationships regulate and control the distribution and allocation of issues, answers, and decision-makers into specific activities, communications, and procedures
> Organisational behavior is a complex network of attentional processes. According to this view, the cognition that takes place within social organizations is not reducible to the cognitive properties of individuals, but results from the organization of communications and procedures in which social cognition takes place.

Question 4

How firms distribute and regulate the attention of its decision-makers:

Answer 4

1. At the level of individual cognition, the principle of focus of attention links attentional processing to individual cognition and behavior.
2. At the level of social cognition, and building on the perspective of Lewinian social psychology (Ross and Nisbett, 1991), the principle of situated attention highlights the importance of the situational context in explaining what decision-makers attend to.
3. At the organizational level, the principle of structural distribution of attention builds on research and theory from organizational decision-making, strategy formulation, and cognitive anthropology to explain how the firm’s economic and social structures regulate and channel issues, answers, and decision- makers into the activities, communications, and procedures that constitute the situational context of decision-making

Question 5

The fundamental components of the model are:

Answer 5

1. the environment of decision; the multiple material, social, and cultural factors, both internal and external to the firm, that impinge upon any decision activity.
2. the repertoire of issues and answers; the cultural and cognitive repertoire of schemas available to decision-makers in the firm to make sense of (issues), and to respond to (answers) environmental stimuli
3. procedural and communicational channels-the firm’s situated activities, communications and procedures; the formal and informal concrete activities, interactions, and communications set up by the firm to induce organizational decision-makers to action on a selected set of issues.
4. the firm’s attention structures-its rules of the game, players, structural positions, and resources; the social, economic, and cultural structures that govern the allocation of time, effort, and attentional focus of organizational decision-makers in their decision-making activities
5. decision-makers; the concrete individuals who jointly participate, within any specific procedural and communication channel, in the enactment of the environment and the social construction of organizational moves
6. organizational moves. The output of processing and decision-making which is situated in procedural and communication channels.

Question 6

How this theory is different from alternative explanations of firm adaptation and behavior:

Answer 6

1. Small contingencies in the firm’s procedural and communication channels may significantly change organizational adaptation and behavior.
2. Inertia, inappropriate change, or successful adaptation may result from situated attentional processes.
3. Both structural regularities and cognitive repertoires of issues and answers underlie attentional processes in organizations.
4. Selective focus of attention facilitates firm’s strategic actions