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At the level of a cognitive schema, a business model is a mental map of a firm’s value-creating, value-delivering, and value-capturing activities and the linkages between them. An important question in the study of business models as cognitive schemas is whether and how schemas differ across industry actors and whether the differences are connected to the variation observed in actual business models in the industry. This chapter examines, in particular, the ways in which business model schemas of industry insiders differ from those of industry outsiders. Using data from interviews with chief executive officers (CEOs) of 30 legal-tech firms, we graphically construct and analyze the CEOs’ schemas of important causal interdependencies between their firms’ activities. The analysis shows systematic differences between insiders and outsider CEOs’ schemas. We theorize that these differences underlie insider and outsider CEOs’ distinct approaches to opportunity recognition, expertise perception, and value framing, and have consequences for actual business model evolution in the industry.

Religious institutions can affect organizational practices when employees bring their religious commitments and practices into the workplace. But those religious commitments function in the midst of other organizational factors that influence the working out of employees’ religious commitments. This process can generate varying outcomes in organizational contexts, ranging from a heightened effect of religious commitment on employee behavior to a negligible or nonexistent influence of religion on employee behavior. Relying on social identity theory and schematic social cognition as unifying frameworks for the study of religious behavior, we develop a theoretically informed approach to understanding how and why the religious beliefs, commitments and practices employees bring to work have varying behavioral impacts.

The attractiveness of dynamic systems perspectives for expanding thinking about motivation, more particularly interest, lies in the central proposition that the individual is a self-organizing system in which “novel forms emerge without predetermination and become increasingly complex with development” (Lewis, 2000, p. 36). As Lewis further points out, “self-organization is not a single theory or model. Rather it is an idea … that promises coherent explanation in the study of pattern, change and novelty” (Lewis, 2000, p. 42). Thelen and Smith (2006) have proposed that self-organization is a “fundamental property of living things” and “by self-organization we mean that pattern and order emerge from the interactions of the components of a complex system without explicit instructions, either in the organism itself or from the environment” (p. 259). They suggest that understanding change and development concerns “the elaborate causal web between active individuals and their continually changing environments” (p. 271) and refer to specific units of organization within the system as “patterns assembled for task-specific purposes whose form and stability depended on both the immediate and more distant history of the system” (p. 284). To date, dynamic systems perspectives have been applied to a wide range of psychological phenomena, for example, the development of perceptual, motor and cognitive systems in infancy and early childhood (see e.g., Thelen & Smith, 2006). Jörg, Davis, and Nickmans (2007) have argued for a similar approach for the learning sciences. They propose a new complexity paradigm suggesting that more attention needs to be given to understanding the dynamics of the complex systems that make up the science of education and teaching.

The field of transportation research, and the World Conferences on Transport Research Society (WCTRS), has an illustrious history. The challenge today is to look to the future in a deep and thoughtful way, to identify emerging issues and opportunities for practice and for research.

This chapter identifies several critical issues in transportation research. We then explore one issue in depth, the need to increase individual and collaborative effectiveness.

This issue points to the need for a new direction in transportation research. Historically, transportation research has focussed on two major thrusts. The analysis thrust has focussed on predicting the consequences of a given transportation plan, project, or service proposal. Associated “design” research has dealt with algorithmic and heuristic techniques for finding “good” plans or policies. The policy thrust has focussed on the organizational issues and processes around making decisions on and implementing transportation plans, projects, or services. This thrust includes public policy issues and approaches, market structures and regulatory processes, organization design issues, distributional consequences, environmental policy issues, and related areas.

Today, we see the need to add a third major thrust to the field of transportation — cognition and action:

• to manage transportation services and enterprises better;

• to use analysis more effectively to inform and influence decisions;

• to use computer support more effectively in transportation organizations and enterprises.

to manage transportation services and enterprises better;

to use analysis more effectively to inform and influence decisions;

to use computer support more effectively in transportation organizations and enterprises.

Research in cognition and action examines how people think and act, and aims to develop aids to thinking and acting that result in significant improvements in peoples' behaviours and performance. Promising research directions draw on cognitive psychology and cognitive science, and especially empirical research on managerial cognition and problem-solving. We introduce the theory of cognitive informatics, describe some applications to transportation management, and discuss relevant software tools.

Research has highlighted the cognitive nature of the business model intended as a cognitive representation describing a business’ value creation and value capture activities. Although the content of the business model has been extensively investigated from this perspective, less attention has been paid to the business model’s causal structure – that is the pattern of cause-effect relations that, in top managers’ or entrepreneurs’ understandings, link value creation and value capture activities. Building on the strategic cognition literature, this paper argues that conceptualizing and analysing business models as cognitive maps can shed light on four important properties of a business model’s causal structure: the levels of complexity, focus and clustering that characterize the causal structure and the mechanisms underlying the causal links featured in that structure. I use examples of business models drawn from the literature as illustrations to describe these four properties. Finally, I discuss the value of a cognitive mapping approach for augmenting extant theories and practices of business model design.

Marion has just taken on the directorship of a joint university/public library. You, as her protégé, are interested in observing how she approaches the new venture. You are curious about what information she will gather, whose advice she will seek, how she will figure out the expectations others have of her and the library, how she will prioritize the many challenges before her, and how she will negotiate her leadership role with the staff. In other words, you want to study Marion's organizational sensemaking.

This qualitative study explores college students’ gender schemas. Sandra Bem’s pioneering work on sex roles and gender schemata are highlighted.

Over 600 college students at a diverse southeastern university were asked to describe the advantages and disadvantages to men’s and women’s gender. Although the question was framed broadly, students devoted significant attention to issues surrounding work and family, highlighting the importance of these roles to their understanding of gender. Over 6,800 responses were coded in The Ethnograph software.

The results showed a gendered schema among these students, with gendered views of work and family, in which men are associated with work and women largely with family. Some racial patterns are also discussed.

This chapter ends with a discussion on how the gender schemas expressed support and maintained a separation of work and family.

This chapter proposes that organizational strategy formation should be characterized theoretically as a process that is subject to several interacting forces, rather than represented by separate discrete decision-models or theoretic perspectives, as is commonly done in the strategic management literature. Based on an extensive review of relevant theory and empirical work in strategic decision-making, organizational change theory, cognitive and social psychology, and strategy processes, seven kinds of “forces” – rational, imposed, teleological, learning, political, heuristic, and social – are identified as interacting in and having significant influence on the strategy formation process. It is further argued that by applying a holistic “forces-view” of the significant and interacting influences on strategy formation, we can better understand the dynamics and challenges in managing the process of defining and changing organizational strategies.

Despite widespread interest in “behavioral strategy,” it is not clear what this term, or its associated academic subfield, is all about. Unless a critical mass of scholars can agree on the meaning of behavioral strategy, and professionally identify with it, this embryonic community may face a marginal existence. We describe three alternative conceptions for the academic subfield of behavioral strategy, along with assessments of the pros and cons of each. The “small tent” version amounts to a direct transposition of the logic of behavioral economics to the field of strategic management, specifically in the style of behavioral decision research. The “midsize tent” view is that behavioral strategy is a commitment to understanding the psychology of strategists. And the “large tent’ view includes consideration of any and all psychological, sociological, and political factors that influence strategic outcomes. We conclude that the midsize tent represents the best path forward, not too narrow and not too broad, allowing rich scope but with coherence. The large tent conception of behavioral strategy, however, is not out of the question and warrants serious consideration.