Conceptual note: Exploring the cognitive significance of organizational strategizing: A dual-process framework and research agenda

Abstract

The considerable volume of theory and research that has sought to illuminate the nature and significance of cognitive processes in strategy formulation and implementation represents but an important first step in the re-humanization of strategy research. In order to achieve the sorts of fine-grained analyses that will ultimately advance understanding of cognition in action, strategy researchers need to move beyond the static analysis of actors’ cognitive maps to a deeper understanding of what lies behind the actions of strategists as they engage with particular strategy practices in their praxis. To accomplish this key goal, strategy researchers need to become more reflective in their own practices, augmenting the observational and interview techniques advocated by various leading contributors to the strategy-as-practice (s-as-p) perspective with a profiling of the cognitive characteristics of strategists, based on psychometrically robust procedures. To this end, drawing on dual-process theories from cognitive psychology and social cognition, we outline a basic two-dimensional framework to inform the investigation of the impact of individual differences in cognitive style (analytical and intuitive approaches to the processing of information) on the observed behaviours of strategy workers in strategy-making episodes and consider its implications for the advancement of theory, research and practice.