Search results

To explore the relationship between managers' cognitive maps and their performance as managers at the same level in the same organisation.Design/methodology/approach – Field study involving 30 branch managers in a financial services organisation operating in New Zealand. A nomthetic approach was used to develop their cognitive maps. Features of these maps were then related to business‐unit performance.Findings – The managers who were higher performing have maps that were considerably simpler, using fewer concepts and fewer linkages.Research limitations/implications/future research – While limited to one organisation and to one level of management, there is evidence that cognition is related to managers' performance. Future research should explore how cognitive structures differ between managerial levels, and how these are related to appropriate measures of performance.Originality/value – One of few studies that have sought to map managers' cognition and organisation performance.

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.

This article explores raters' understanding on the decision‐making process in the public service performance appraisal system (PAS) by looking at the cognitive processing models (CPM) steps involved. Presents the results of semi‐structured cognitive mapping interviews undertaken with novice raters in the Malaysia public service (MPS) context. Interviews were conducted using cognitive mapping protocol. The resultant causal cognitive maps explored findings from CPM applied in appraisal decision making. Explains the performance appraisal process and theoretical framework for the CPM. From the research findings, it is clear that raters recognised the CPM steps in their performance appraisal practice. The study also identifies individual differences in novice raters' CPM in terms of concepts and complexity. The findings are used to validate the CPM concepts suggested in related literature. Finally, the study discusses the implications of CPM in a broader context of performance appraisal decision‐making process.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability of using concept maps in organizations where knowledge management is the goal.

Based on the principles stated by Nonaka and Takeuchi about knowledge creation and conversion and on the work by Novak and Gowin on concept maps, the core idea is to present the use of concept maps as a technique that facilitates, in some cases, and supports, in others, the realization of the following knowledge conversion operations: socialization, exteriorization, combination and internalization. These are the operations that, according to Nonaka and Takeuchi (1999), allow for the transformation of individual knowledge into collective knowledge and vice versa. Furthermore, it aims to answer the question of how to support the process of knowledge management in an organization through the use of a software application like CmapTools.

This paper shows that knowledge evolves through various stages, with particular characteristics that need to be acknowledged in order to be managed properly.

The technique of employing concept maps is appropriate to sponsor and facilitate the transitions among these stages of knowledge. It even allows for the preservation of the valuable knowledge of a person through the management of individual knowledge or the knowledge of a group of persons in an organization. This, in turn, promotes knowledge management in the enterprise itself.

Exploratory learning is regarded as an important ability for developing knowledge from open environments. During the exploration, learners not only need to acquire new information based on their current interests, but also they need to form new perspectives by incorporating new knowledge into their previous knowledge. This paper seeks to address these issues.

To this end, this paper proposes an approach that includes a concept association bank to recommend related concepts in a domain based on the goal of an exploration. By doing so, learners' knowledge can be expanded beyond their current understanding. An experiment was conducted to investigate how the proposed approach facilitated the learners' exploration.

The results indicated that the concept association bank is a useful mechanism to help learners gain new understanding, including providing exploration directions, reducing complexity and cognitive load, facilitating data‐ and goal‐driven exploration strategies, and commenting on new understanding. The implications of these results are discussed.

Current recommendation systems emphasise a data‐driven strategy, which seeks isolated pieces of information, instead of suggesting directions related to their exploration goal. The problem with such an approach is that learners' exploration will be limited by their existing knowledge. Thus, this paper presents an approach to support both data‐ and goal‐driven strategies.

The aim of this paper is to frame the stakeholder-driven system mapping approach in the context of climate change, building on stakeholder knowledge of system boundaries, key elements and interactions within a system and to introduce a decision support tool for managing and visualising this knowledge into insightful system maps with policy implications.

This methodological framework is based on the concepts of market maps. The process of eliciting and visualising expert knowledge is facilitated by means of a reference implementation in MATLAB, which allows for designing technological innovation systems models in either a structured or a visual format.

System mapping can contribute to evaluating systems for climate change by capturing knowledge of expert groups with regard to the dynamic interrelations between climate policy strategies and other system components, which may promote or hinder the desired transition to low carbon societies.

This study explores how system mapping addresses gaps in analytical tools and complements the systems of innovation framework. Knowledge elicitation, however, must be facilitated and build upon a structured framework such as technological innovation systems.

This approach can provide policymakers with significant insight into the strengths and weaknesses of current policy frameworks based on tacit knowledge embedded in stakeholders.

The developed methodological framework aims to include societal groups in the climate policy-making process by acknowledging stakeholders’ role in developing transition pathways. The system map codifies stakeholder input in a structured and transparent manner.

This is the first study that clearly defines the system mapping approach in the frame of climate policy and introduces the first dedicated software option for researchers and decision makers to use for implementing this methodology.

This chapter aims to enhance understanding of the main drivers of internal auditors' moral courage to speak up about sensitive information and their cause-and-effect relationships. We use cognitive mapping method to analyze 20 chief audit executives' cognitive maps in Tunisia. A collective map was grounded through assembling the full individual maps. Using the Decision Explorer software for our analysis, we find that the state hope, whistle-blowing policy, self-efficacy, perceived supervisor support and independence of internal audit function are the main drivers for internal auditors' moral courage. Our findings are also supplemented by semi-structured interviews. Our chapter offers a novel methodological contribution to auditing literature as well as new empirical evidence (contribution to knowledge) on the drivers of internal auditors' moral courage.

Electronic texts are an essential component of any e‐learning environment. This paper extends previous research on navigation and learning with electronic texts by examining the effects of a novel approach to navigation: allowing the learner to create their own navigation aids. We present two experimental studies investigating the effects of creating versus using A‐Z indexes and graphical maps on knowledge development and feelings of ownership for learning. Findings revealed that using a graphical map for navigation has advantages for knowledge development and for feelings of ownership, whereas creating a graphical map offers no significant benefits over plain hypertext; there were no benefits to using or creating A‐Z indexes over plain hypertext. It was also found in comparisons of using vs. creating graphical maps that high feelings of ownership were correlated with higher quality knowledge development. These findings have three major implications for designers of e‐learning environments: including graphical map navigation aids should be considered; designers should not assume that allowing learners to create their own navigation aids will improve learning; feelings of ownership for learning should be encouraged in learners.

The purpose of this paper is to present information about a team‐teaching course on sustainable development (SD) for educators in an institution of higher education, Monterrey Campus of ITESM in México.

Four faculty members were invited to work together with the Sustainable Campus Programme coordinator in the process of developing the “Educate‐the‐Educator's” SD course. The course was structured using lectures, readings, class role play activities, homework, and general discussion. Additionally, a workshop‐format was woven throughout the course; its function was to help the educators incorporate SD issues within their own courses.

It was found that a multi‐disciplinarily developed and delivered course is an effective vehicle for educating educators on SD. Documentation of some facets of the learning process further helped the “students” and the course leaders to better understand the whole learning process.

The paper's value rests on the interconnected structure, showing resonance with the triple bottom line, as well as many other dimensions linked with sustainable development. This structure increased the course participants' comprehension of sustainability. Furthermore, the use of concept maps and digraph theory to evaluate “faculty participants'” comprehension of the interconnections and dimensions of SD proved to be a successful innovation.

The aim of this paper is to identify difficulties and tension fields encountered in a Social Accountability (SA) 8000 certification process. The paper is based on a case study within a multinational small–medium enterprise (SME) during the implementation of a SA8000 standard.

In the framework of the case study, we adopt a cognitivist approach and use cognitive maps to describe and analyze the corporate social responsibility (CSR) representations of the main actors of the certification process: the owner-manager of the SME and the certification manager. We collected additional information on the case company through document analysis, additional interviews, validation interviews, confrontation interviews and follow-up interviews after one year.

The analysis of cognitive maps revealed tension fields and difficulties linked to the different representations of social responsibility between the social accountability standard SA8000 and the owner-manager strategic vision. It also underlines the sensemaking role of the certification manager in the certification process.

Limitations of the research are the explorative character of an illustrative case study and the limits of the construction of cognitive maps. The cognitive perspective brings new insights into the certification process and into the interaction between middle and top management.

Implementing a CSR standard necessitates a cognitive change of individual representationsto integrate CSR standardized criteria in the complex, idiosyncratic and systemic representations of the main actors.

The case study shows clearly the tensions existing between the CSR representation based on a social standard and the CSR representation of SME owner-managers.

Cognitive mapping has been often used to analyze and to discuss strategic vision of SME owner-managers, but rarely in the field of CSR. The confrontation of two maps and the complementary analysis of the case study context bring additional perspectives on implementation difficulties.