Organization Behavior for Strategic Innovation

The article’s primary objective is to investigate how team members’ cognitive style affects the occurrence of errors in execution tasks. Two studies were carried out. The objective of the first was to investigate how process focus is affected by cognitive styles, and the effect of process focus on errors. The second, on the other hand, tried to examine how cognitive style diversity influences strategic agreement.

Hypotheses, Issues Discussed, Results of the Study, and Connections to Key Issues

While there are several dimensions of cognitive styles, the article dwells on verbalization-visualization, which is divided into two subsystems- spatial and objects visualizations. By these subsystems, five hypotheses emerge. The first hypothesis states that, in comparison to spatial visualization, object visualization is a less positive predictor of the teams’ process focus. The second maintains that process focus in organizations has a negative association with errors in the execution tasks. According to the third, team diversity in members’ cognition will be inversely correlated to strategic agreement. The fourth hypothesis, which is a development of the third, holds the view that strategic consensus associates negatively with execution task errors. Finally, the fifth relates the strategic agreement with team heterogeneity in errors and cognitive styles in performance tasks.

Spatial visualizers will have a greater tendency towards detail-oriented thinking; resulting to an elevated level of team performance (Alam & McNaughton, 2013). The team is less likely to commit errors when it’s more process-focused. Strategic consensus is a reflection of whether the members are ‘on the same page’, and is relevant to the top management and work teams (Aidt & Dutta, 2014).

The first study recognized that teams with high number of object-visualizers are less process-focused than those with high number of spatial-visualizers (Aggarwal & Williams Woolley, 2013). The second, on the other hand, recognized that the creation of strategic accord has a negative association with heterogeneity in cognitive style. One way to achieve strategic focus and limit the errors is by having at least one member of the team who has high spatial visualization. Cognitive styles of the team members affect the team’s strategic focus and strategic consensus.

Verbalizer-visualizer, one of the cognitive style dimensions, has two subsystems – object and spatial. Five hypotheses are developed based on these subsystems. The second hypothesis is a development of the first, and the fourth the development of the third. Since process focus is associated with fewer errors, teams high in spatial visualization commit fewer errors than those high in object visualization.

Application and Critique

Team activities such as operating in conditions with no apparent experts, coordination among the members, decision making under time-pressure, diving the work among the members, and others, apply to many organizations’ settings and tasks. An appreciation of the processes affected by the makeup of the team could greatly assist managers to recognize the interventions needed to offset the undesirable impacts of cognitive diversity (Bender & Beller, 2016).

It is worth noting that, not all task contexts where the errors are costly. There is, therefore, the need for a consideration of situations where cognitive heterogeneity is a benefit rather than a burden. Another weakness of this study is that it doesn’t incorporate all the complications faced by organization teams.

References

Aidt, T. & Dutta, J. (2014). Strategic consensus. Cambridge: University of Cambridge, Dept. of Applied Economics.

Aggarwal, I. & Williams Woolley, A. (2013). Do you see what I see? The effect of members’ cognitive styles on team processes and errors in task execution. Elsevier, 122(1), 92-99.

Alam, M. & McNaughton, R. (2013) Managing Strategic Innovation Pathways to Achieve Innovation Persistence. SSRN Electronic Journalhttp://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1011447.

Bender, A. & Beller, S. (2016). Current Perspectives on Cognitive Diversity. Frontiers In Psychology, 7. http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00509.

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