Cognition as Configuration: A Set-theoretic Approach to Managerial and Organizational Cognition

The jobs of organizational decision-makers are particularly complex, and complex organizational tasks are likely to require complex cognitions too. The Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) – a configurational methodology – offers great potential to investigate such complex forms of cognitions, where multiple mechanisms contribute simultaneously to an outcome in question. To date, however, research that investigates managerial and organizational cognition through configurational lenses is scarce because prior studies have tended to explain complex phenomena by means of a linear logic that each time focuses on a single superior mechanism, in isolation of other mechanisms. The papers presented in this symposium aim at illustrating how the configurational approach works in several lines of research associated to managerial and organizational cognition. The symposium discussion ultimately not only aims at shedding light on the multi-dimensional nature of cognition involved in complex phenomena, but also advances the use of a relatively a novel, underutilized methodological approach to study the impact of configurations of cognitive mechanisms in managerial and organizational phenomena. Decentralized platforms: coordination without managers and early stage growth Presenter: Ying-Ying Hsieh; Imperial College Business School Presenter: Jean-philippe Vergne; UCL School of Management How entrepreneurs generate business ideas: a fuzzy-set analysis of think-aloud protocols Presenter: Zorica Zagorac-Uremovic; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, ETH Opportunities and Challenges of a Neo-Configurational Perspective for Research on MOC Presenter: Johannes Meuer; Kühne Logistics U. Presenter: Maricela Arellano Caro; HEC Montreal Your (un)divided attention: a fuzzy-set analysis of attention and adaptation Presenter: Andrew Sarta; York U.