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To investigate two explanations for how variations in social network structure might produce differences in cognitive and perceptual orientation. One explanation is that the extent to which structures lead people to feel strong social bonds encourages holism. The other is that the extent to which a network leads individuals to be concerned about distal network relations leads to holistic thinking.

An experimental study in which participants interacted in three-person networks of negotiated (with or without a one-exchange rule), generalized, or productive exchange before being administered the framed-line test, a common measure of cognitive and perceptual orientation.

Participants in network structures more likely to lead participants to be concerned about what was happening in relationships in the network of which they were not part performed relatively more holistically on the framed-line test. However, these effects did not extend to both modules of the test, and a check on the ordering of networks as reflecting concern with distal network relationships failed.

The experimental design was structured such that only one of the presented explanations could possibly be supported, whereas they both could be correct. Nevertheless, results do indicate that cognitive orientation did respond to variations in network structure.

Explanations for cultural differences typically implicate social structure, although the explanations often cannot be directly tested. Results show that social structure can produce effects that mirror differences thought to reflect profound cultural variations.

We extend the literature on network perception by introducing a novel view of how this perception is structured. We propose the concept of Cognitive Aggregated Social Structures (CASS) as a framework to capture perceptions of opaque networks – that is, networks where relations are difficult to observe due to their features, their members, and the characteristics of the environment in which they operate. We argue that actors simplify their perception of opaque network structures via “chunking,” that is, by cognitively representing network ties as between categories of actors rather than between specific network members. We test the validity of the CASS construct and its predictive power by showing how these representations affect actors’ perceptions of relevant network outcomes. Using data from a major inter-organizational technology consortium, we show that perceived density among “chunks” in the knowledge transfer network is positively related to perceived consortium performance. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings for the strategic management literature, highlighting potential contributions to strategic formulation and implementation, category emergence, industry evolution, and cognitive barriers to entry.

Social media brand platforms have become a popular means for engaged customers to share information and experiences with brands and other customers. However, empirical research on how customer engagement (CE) relates to customers’ sharing intentions with the brand is limited. This study aims to investigate causal patterns of four CE dimensions – focused attention, absorption, enthusiasm and interaction – together with two cognitive structure properties in stimulating sharing intentions with the brand.

Using data from 782 Chinese customers of brand pages on the social media platform Weibo, this paper is the first to use both finite mixture partial least squares (FIMIX-PLS) analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to empirically assess the impact of CE configurations on sharing intentions.

The findings imply that not all of the CE dimensions co-occur necessarily and that different configurations of them can produce superior sharing intentions, conditional on the cognitive structure of customers, including their level of brand knowledge and avant-gardism.

Although restricted to customers on Weibo, the results inform practice about how social media technology can facilitate different CE configurations and customer sharing intentions.

The results inform brand managers’ segmentation efforts and CE content marketing initiatives that can induce different CE configurations and customer sharing intentions with customers that possess high avant-gard and brand knowledge characteristics.

This study is the first to substantiate how different CE configurations (as gestalts) affect sharing intentions in social media and to challenge conventional net-effects thinking about CE dimensions. Understanding how such conditional configurations foster sharing via a social media platform is advantageous because it can improve segmentation efforts to strengthen brand relationships.

The success of a young entrepreneur depends on how institutional support can facilitate venture performance. Drawing on the institutional theory, this study posited the role of self-efficacy in supporting the effect of institutional support. Self-efficacy is a driving factor for entrepreneurs in managing and implementing business action confidently and successfully. With macro- and micro-oriented research, this study aims to examine how the micro-level factor that is self-efficacy could mediate the influence of macro-level factors (i.e. institutional governance, cultural and social norms and cognitive structure) toward iGen's new venture performance.

A total of 462 respondents representing the population of Malaysian iGen entrepreneurs participated in this study. The samples were selected using a multistage sampling technique (i.e. probability cluster sampling technique and non-probability purposive sampling). Survey items were adapted from the previous studies. Structural equation modelling was used, and the first stage involved testing confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test the measurement items' unidimensionality, validity and reliability. The second stage of analysis is to test the mediation model.

The mediation analysis results confirm that the relationship between institutional governance, cultural and social norms, cognitive structure and new venture performance is mediated by self-efficacy. The results confirm that the relationship between institutional governance and cultural and social norms toward new venture performance is fully mediated by self-efficacy. On the other hand, the relationship between cognitive structure and new venture performance is partially mediated by self-efficacy.

For future research, it is necessary to consider a wide-ranging sample size in improving research generalisation. Moreover, the cross-sectional study only observes the phenomenon at a certain point and cannot explain the process in the correlational relationship. Future researchers are encouraged to adopt a longitudinal study, which allows the researchers to study a sample throughout a period to draw firm conclusions. Survey data also raise the concern of common method variance (CMV), and future studies may use different data types to solve the problem. In addition, future studies are encouraged to examine other factors that could influence new venture performance.

This study extends the current literature on public policy and entrepreneurship. It comprehensively explains the relationship between institutional governance, cultural and social norms, cognitive structure and self-efficacy toward new venture performance. This study was also conducted in a developing country and iGen context, which can offer new insights into the current literature. Many empirical studies have applied institutional theory in examining entrepreneurship action and behaviour, yet the scholarly consecration on micro-level factors is limited. With macro- and micro-oriented research, this study has examined the influence of self-efficacy as a potential mediating variable.

In the extant research on online knowledge communities (OKCs), little attention has been paid to the influence of membership fluidity on the coevolution of the social and knowledge systems. This article aims to fill this gap.

Based on the attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) framework, this paper constructs a simulation model to study the coevolution of these two systems under different levels of membership fluidity.

By analyzing the evolution of these systems with the vector autoregression (VAR) method, we find that social and knowledge systems become more orderly as the coevolution progresses. Furthermore, in communities with low membership fluidity, the microlevel of the social system (i.e. users) drives the coevolution, whereas in communities with high membership fluidity, the microlevel of the knowledge system (i.e. users' views) drives the coevolution.

This paper extends the application of the ASA framework and enriches the literature on membership fluidity of online communities and the literature on driving factors for coevolution of the social and knowledge systems in OKCs. On a practical level, our work suggests that community administrators should adopt different strategies for different membership fluidity to efficiently promote the coevolution of the social and knowledge systems in OKCs.

Social networks are not just patterns of interaction and sentiment in the real world; they are also cognitive (re)constructions of social relations, some real, some imagined. Focusing on networks as mental entities, our essay describes a new method that relies on stylized network images to gather quantitative data on how people “see” specific aspects of their social worlds. We discuss the logic of our approach, present several examples of “visual network scales,” discuss some preliminary findings, and identify some of the problems and prospects in this nascent line of work on the phenomenology of social networks.

As they say, “Change is the only constant.” Thriving and surviving during a period of extraordinary collision of technological advances, globalization, and climate change can be daunting. At any given point in one’s life, a transition can be interpreted in terms of the magnitude of change (how big or small) and the individual’s ontological experience of change (whether it disrupts an equilibrium or adapts an emergent way of life). These four quadrants represent different ways to live in a highly dynamic and complex world. We share the resulting four-quadrant framework from a quantitative and a mixed methods study to examine responses to various ways we respond to transitions. Contingent upon these two dimensions, one can use a four-quadrant framework to mobilize resources to design a response and hypothesize a desired outcome. Individuals may find themselves at various junctions of these quadrants over a lifespan. These four quadrants provide “requisite variety” to navigate individual ontology as they move into and out of fluid spaces we often call instability during a time of transition. In this chapter, we identified social, cognitive, psychological, and behavioral factors that contribute to thriving transition experiences, embracing dynamic stability. Two new constructs were developed, the first measures the receptivity to change, Transformation Quotient (TQ) and second measures the range of responses to transitions from surviving to thriving, Thriving Transitional Experiences (TTE). We hope our work will pave the way for Thriving to become a “normal” outcome of experiencing change by transforming the lexicon and expectation of engaging with transitions.

This study examines the motivational processes of charged behavior and collective efficacy driving interdependence and agency in new product development (NPD) teams and the moderating impact of team risk-taking propensity as affective, cognitive and behavioral social processes support team innovation.

Data were collected from 92 NPD teams engaged in B2C and B2B product and service development. Mediating and moderating effects are examined using partial least squares structural equation modeling, referencing social cognitive and collective agency theories as the research framework.

The analysis validates collective self-efficacy and charged behavior as interdependent motivational–affective processes that align cognitive resources and govern team effort toward innovativeness. Teams' risk-taking propensity regulates behavior, and collective efficacy facilitates self-regulated motivational engagement. Charged behavior cultivates the emotional contagion, team identification, cohesion and adaptation required for team functioning. Team potency fosters cohesiveness, while team learning improves adaptability along the innovation journey. The resulting theory asserts that motivational drivers enhance the interplay between cognitive and behavioral processes.

Managers should consider NPD teams as social systems with a capacity for collective agency nurtured through interdependence, which requires collective efficacy and shared competencies to generate motivational purpose and innovativeness. Managers must remain mindful of teams' risk tolerance as regulating the impact of motivational factors on innovativeness.

This study contributes to research on the motivational–affective drivers of NPD charged behavior and collective efficacy as complementary to cognitive and behavioral processes sustaining team innovativeness.

Based on theoretical principles of Semantics, Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis/Discourse Studies, the present work analysed a corpus of opinion articles, published in Portuguese newspapers and news magazines from December 2011 to March 2013, in order to foreground the dominant social representations of ‘Troika’, ‘The Portuguese Government’ and ‘The Portuguese’ in these discourses.

A systematic analysis of discourse structures in the corpus was developed in order to examine their potential in the expression of ideological content. Concepts such as Semantic/Thematic Roles, Force Dynamics and Symmetry were combined with analytic models from Discourse Studies to illustrate the Ideological Discourse Representations and the Positions in the Discourse Space (DS) of Social Actors. The linguistic hypotheses and generalisations were generated bottom up, departing from the regular patterns observable in the empirical data and extracting conclusions from them. The interpretative practice was, therefore, made in adherence to corpus evidence.

This integrated analysis has shown that the reconstruction of ‘Portugal’ and ‘the Portuguese’ vis-a-vis ‘Europe’, represented by ‘Troika’, corresponds to opponent positioning that polarise these entities, foregrounding the distance and the conflict between them and contributing to a vision of a disintegrated Europe. In fact, the reality depicted in the opinion articles analysed was a polarised reality, in the sense that these articles repeatedly used linguistic constructions that placed (through several rhetoric devices that will be analysed) Europe and Troika on one ‘pole’ and ‘The Portuguese’ on the other ‘pole’, expressing, thus, the movement of the actors to polar opposites.

On the theoretical level, this chapter proposes an integrated approach towards opinion discourse in the press, combining Critical Discourse analytic and DS Theory perspectives with the insights from Socio-Cognitive approach by Van Dijk and aspects of Cognitive Linguistics by Talmy.

This study aims to acknowledge that most Indonesian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) experience slow growth. It highlighted that this sluggishness is because of some falsification of Indonesia’s ecological psychology. It focuses on investigating the situated cognition that probably supports this falsification, such as affordance, a community of practice, embodiment and the legitimacy of peripheral participation situated cognition and social intelligence theories.

This study obtained data from published newspapers between October 2016 and February 2019. The authors used the Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis and the J48 C.45 algorithm. The authors analyzed the data using the emergence of news probability for both the Government of Indonesia (GoI) and Indonesian society and the situated cognition concerning the improvement of the SMEs. The authors inferred ecological psychology from these published newspapers in Indonesia that the engaged actions were still suppressed, in comparison with being and doing.

This study contributes to the innovation and leadership policies of the SMEs’ managerial systems and the GoI. After this study identified the backward-looking practices, which the GoI and the people of Indonesia held, this study recommended some policies to help create a forward-looking orientation. The second one is also a policy for the GoI, which needs to reduce the discrepancy between the signified and the signifier, as recommended by the structuralist theory. The last one is suggested by the social learning theory; policies are needed that relate to developing the SMEs’ beliefs, attitudes and behavior. It means that the GoI should prepare the required social contexts, which are in motoric production and reinforcement. Explicitly, the authors argue that the GoI facilitates SMEs by emphasizing the internal learning process.

The authors present some possibilities for the limitations of this research. The authors took into account that this study assumes the SMEs are all the same, without industrial clustering. It considers that the need for social learning and social cognition by the unclustered industries is equal. Second, the authors acknowledge that Indonesia is an emerging country, and its economic structure has three levels of contributors; the companies listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange, then the SMEs and the lowest level is the underground economy. Third, the authors did not distinguish the levels of success for the empowerment programs that are conducted by either the GoI or the local governments. This study recognizes that the authors did not measure success levels. It means that the authors only focused on the knowledge content.

From these pieces of evidence, this study constructed its strategies. The authors offer three kinds of policies. The first is the submission of special allocation funds from which the GoI and local governments develop their budgets for the SMEs’ social learning and social cognition. The second is the development of social learning and social cognition’s curricula for both the SMEs’ owners and executive officers. The third is the need for a national knowledge repository for all the Indonesian SMEs. This repository is used for the dissemination of knowledge.

This study raises argumental novelties with some of the critical reasoning. First, the authors argue that the sluggishness of the Indonesian SMEs is because of some fallacies in their social cognition. This social cognition is derived from the cultural knowledge that the GoI and people of Indonesia disclosed in the newspapers. This study shows the falsifications from the three main perspectives of the structuration, structuralist and social learning theories. Second, this study can elaborate on the causal factor for the sluggishness of Indonesia’s SMEs, which can be explained by philosophical science, especially its fallacies (Hundleby, 2010; Magnus and Callender, 2004). The authors expand the causal factors for each gap in every theory, which determined the SMEs’ sluggishness through the identification of inconsistencies in each dimension of their structuration, structuralism and social learning. This study focused on the fallacy of philosophical science that explains the misconceptions about the SMEs’ improvement because of faulty reasoning, which causes the wrong moves to be made in the future (Dorr, 2017; Pielke, 1999).