Search results

In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?” Our tests ask whether brains can manage without bodies and without extracranial resources, whether they can manage in social isolation, and whether brains are the ultimate controllers of emotional and cognitive aspects of organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that, to accomplish work-related tasks in organizations, the brain relies on and closely interfaces with the body, interpersonal and social dynamics, and cognitive and emotional processes that are distributed across persons and artifacts. The results of this “thought experiment” suggest that the brain is more appropriately conceived as a regulatory organ that integrates top-down (i.e., social, artifactual and environmental) and bottom-up (i.e., neural) influences on organizational behavior, rather than the sole cause of that behavior. Drawing on a socially situated perspective, our analysis develops a framework that connects brain, body and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex emotional and cognitive organizational systems. We discuss the implications for the emerging field of organizational cognitive neuroscience and for conceptualizing the interaction between the brain, cognition and emotion in organizations.

For organizational neuroscience to progress, it requires an overarching theoretical framework that locates neural processes appropriately within the wider context of organizational cognitive activities. In this chapter, we argue the case for building such a framework on two foundations: (1) critical realism, and (2) socially situated cognition. Critical realism holds to the importance of identifying biophysical roots for organizational activity (including neurophysiological processes) while acknowledging the top-down influence of higher-level, emergent organizational phenomena such as routines and structures, thereby avoiding the trap of reductionism. Socially situated cognition connects the brain, body, and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex organizational systems. By focusing on adaptive action as the primary explanandum, socially situated cognition posits that, although the brain plays a driving role in adaptive organizational activity, this activity also relies on the body, situational context, and cognitive processes that are distributed across organizational agents and artifacts. The value of the framework that we sketch out is twofold. First, it promises to help organizational neuroscience become more than an arena for validating basic neuroscience concepts, enabling organizational researchers to backfill into social neuroscience, by identifying unique relations between the brain and social organization. Second, it promises to build deeper connections between neuroscience and mainstream theories of organizational behavior, by advancing models of managerial and organizational cognition that are biologically informed and socially situated.

Today, pedagogy does not innovate by proposing new methods but by creating learning conditions conducive to the autonomy of learners. During training, students learn to set goals for acquiring knowledge, control their activity and persevere in the face of difficulties. Innovative teachers favour an integrative approach to human activity to jointly develop the relationship with the learning environment or work environment, the socio-cognitive characteristics of learners and their sense of responsibility for the consequences of action and metacognitive management of the activity.

Learners thus evolve in a learning ecosystem that includes the learner himself and his physical and social environment: his tools available (notepad, tablet, etc.), his resources (procedures, methods, instructions, course materials, notes, documentation, etc.) and his partners who also have some knowledge (pair, teachers, expert network, colleagues, etc.). This ecosystem can be seen as a virtual learning space in which technologies that contribute to learning (hardware, software and network) are used with the aim of fostering interactions between stakeholder and content communities. The knowledge is distributed and accessible through the memory of the learner himself or through his tools, resources or partners. It is therefore in the elaboration of the learning mechanism mobilising all the actors to meet the needs of the learners that the innovation can be efficient and effective.

Within this frame of reference, we propose some reflections from pedagogical practice that can develop the learners’ power to act – Which IT environments are needed for specified actions? What pedagogies need to be implemented using these IT environments? What collaborative and reflective tools are needed for professional and university training? Which methods energise learners’ agentivity in the digital age? Three case studies focussing on these questions will offer some recommendations for innovation in pedagogy.

Artifacts are rarely used today to visualize thoughts, insights, and ideas in strategy work. Rather, textual and verbal communication dominates. This is despite artifacts and visual representations holding many advantages as tools to create and make sense of strategy in teamwork. To advance our understanding of the benefits of visual aids in strategy work, I synthesize insights from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and management research. My analysis exposes distinct neurocognitive advantages concerning attention, emotion, learning, memory, intuition, and creativity from visual sense-building. These advantages increase when sense-building activities are playful and storytelling is used.