Search results

Bandwagon refers to the adoption of popular ideas, thoughts, or practices. Although the inter-organizational (macro) dynamics of the phenomenon have been widely studied, its intra-organizational (micro) aspects have received limited attention. The paper presents a theoretical framework and a model that address intra-organizational aspects of bandwagon drawing on distributed cognition, social relationships, and other elements of the organizational structure such as culture and defensive routines. The analysis of simulated data from the model suggests that the phenomenon is likely to decrease with highly informal culture, promotion of advice taking and giving, low levels of distrust, strong social ties, and minimal defensive routines.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature by examining the generation of collective tacit knowledge (CTK) in organizations through social ludic activities (SLAs) as a specific form of playful micro-practice carried out by employees.

This paper builds upon socially distributed cognition (SDC) and transactive memory systems (TMS) to analyze SLAs’ contribution to CTK creation in the workplace. These theories provide conceptual underpinnings for comprehending how workers self-organize shared activities to store, retrieve and use each other’s tacit knowledge within the collective. An example is provided to illustrate SLAs’ manifestation in an agile-based software development firm.

SLAs may facilitate collective members’ knowing and learning whereby different solutions are sought and potential tactics to cope with work issues are attuned to changing conditions by the collective members at work. Four moderating factors, namely physical proximity, psychological safety, richness of communication pathways and intensity of interactions, are identified and propositions to conceptualize their role in CTK generation through SLAs are formulated.

SLA players’ efforts to solve dysfunctionalities at work are not merely prompted by interdependencies among work-related tasks but also driven by high levels of social embeddedness and interaction among employees. Managers should become more supportive of collective playful activities in their organizations by building a propitious corporate climate for the mobilization of CTK in the workplace. Understanding SLAs as a soft group device where CTK resides, transits, is enacted and continuously metamorphosed represents an important complement to hard devices offered by information systems.

Relying on the notion of SLAs as a means to cope with work concerns, the authors integrate insights from organizational play, knowledge management, SDC and TMS literatures to advance the authors’ understanding of CTK creation through collective playful undertakings at work.

This article presents a cognitive framework to study dynamic/adaptive aspects of a collection of popular fit measures used in organisation research, in an attempt to highlight what there is to be gained.

This paper uses a distributed e-cognition (DEC) framework to examine the current organisational literature of fit measures.

This paper highlights that most measures have a rather narrow focus and do not address dynamic/adaptive aspects in complex social systems (e.g. organisations). To both provide a way to integrate fit measures and cover the cognition gap in this literature, this article highlights the need for a more sophisticated measure.

This paper provides a novel approach to examining organisational fit literature through a distributed (e)-cognitive framework.

In this study, we examine the developments of transactive memory systems and collective mind and their influence on performance in virtual teams. Although one of the oft‐cited benefits of the virtual team is the ability of its members to contribute diverse knowledge and expertise, the question of how virtual team members can bring their respective knowledge and expertise to solve the problems they face has been largely ignored in the past research on virtual teams. Building on an emerging body of socio‐cognitive literature, we argue that transactive memory systems and the collective mind are two important variables that explain team performance. We tested our hypotheses with a longitudinal data set that was collected from 38 virtual teams of graduate management students from six universities in four countries over eight weeks. The results suggest that the influence of team members' early communication volume on team performance decreases as teams develop transactive memory systems and a collective mind. The results further suggest that the development of a collective mind represents a high‐order learning in team settings.

This study aims at redefining bounded rationality on the basis of a more socialized view of the individual. In doing so, it introduces “inquisitiveness” as a key disposition that some team members use to assemble and integrate knowledge when solving problems.

Using an agent-based computational simulation, this research models different simulated employees working together in “ad hoc” teams to solve problems.

Results show that inquisitiveness may work as an efficiency “driver” that, when present, economizes on the knowledge needed by team members to solve problems. In addition to that, results also show that environments with many problems are more suitable for inquisitive individuals to be effective.

Following the late Herbert Simon, the paper takes the stance that rationality should be redefined as a socially oriented process and introduces inquisitiveness as one – although probably not the only one – of the characteristics that help individuals and teams to make rational decisions.