Suchergebnisse

Organizational theory and research has increased attention to the determinants and consequences of attention in organizations. Attention is not, however, a unitary concept but is used differently in various metatheories: the behavioral theory of the firm, managerial cognition, issue selling, attention-based view, and ecology. At the level of the brain, neuroscientists have identified three varieties of attention: selective attention, executive attention, and vigilance. Attention is shaped by both top-down (i.e., schema-driven) and bottom-up (i.e., stimulus-driven) processes. Inspired by neuroscience research, I classify and compare three varieties of attention studied in organization science: attentional perspective (top-down), attentional engagement (combining top-down and bottom-up executive attention and vigilance), and attentional selection (the outcome of attentional processes). Based on research findings, I develop five propositions on how the varieties of attention in organization provide a theoretical alternative to theories of structural determinism or strategic choice, with a particular focus on the role of attention in explaining organizational adaptation and change.

Some notes on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's relation to James Merrill's poetry, "paying particular attention" to the tilt of her head and the beauty and power of her own poetry.

Attracting attention is a basic feature of economic life but no standard economic problem. A new theoretical model is developed which describes the general structure of competition for attention and characterizes equilibria. The exogenous fundamentals of an attention economy are the space of receiving subjects with their attention capacity, and the potential set of competing companies (senders) with their radiation technologies. The endogenous variables explained by the theory are equilibrium audiences (the clients belonging to a company), their signal exposure and attention, and the diversity of senders surviving the contest for attention. Application of the equilibrium analysis to changes in information technologies and globalisation suggests that international integration or range-increasing technical progress may decrease global diversity. Local diversity, perceived by the individual receivers, may increase nonetheless.

The main premises in this article are that organizational attention is inherently communicative, and can be nurtured through communication interventions. Two communication practices that reflect organizational attention—information allocation and dialogue—can be nurtured through organizational structures and interventions. Increasing opportunities for dialogue across organizational functions is critical to improve collective attention. Prior research and empirical data are presented to assert that a long-term orientation is also imperative to develop attention through communication practices such as information allocation and dialogue.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse how one's conception of the other may inform moral understanding. It attempts to argue that the account of the other and of the role ethics ascribes him/her in business or in society must be informed by a certain "attention" to others.Design/methodology/approachTo demonstrate this point, the paper starts with recalling the debate between the ethics of care and the ethics of justice. Then, it challenges the common conception of moral agency in English speaking moral philosophy. The paper then demonstrates how moral understanding is informed by the idea that others are an absolute limit to will and how conception of attention is interdependent with the awareness that others are one's fellows in humanity.FindingsThis paper shows that the traditional conception of moral agency does not allow one to understand why the idea that others are an absolute limit to the will is essential to the understanding of morality and why it plays a crucial role in ethical life. The paper argues that the traditional conception of moral agency understands morality as something based on an independently graspable conception of human nature. Against this idea, the paper argues that one's awareness that others are one's fellows in humanity is interdependent with the moral understanding and with the attention payed to them.Originality/valueThe paper challenges some basic assumptions of business ethics and of corporate social responsibility.

This article asks two questions stemming from a conflict in the literature on the U.S. Supreme Court's attention to issues: (1) Are levels of legal mobilization explained by salient Court decisions? (2) Is the Court's level of attention explained by levels of legal mobilization? To answer them, the author tests hypotheses from the public policy and public law literature on data from seven specific issue areas. The author finds that levels of legal mobilization cannot be explained by past salient decisions of the Court but finds some evidence that changes in the Court's levels of attention are explained by levels of mobilization.

We document that the expectations of households, firms, and professional forecasters in standard surveys simultaneously extrapolate from recent events and underreact to new information. Existing models of expectation formation, whether behavioral or rational, cannot account for these observations. We develop a rational theory of extrapolation based on limited attention, which is consistent with this evidence. In particular, we show that limited, asymmetric attention to procyclical variables can explain the coexistence of extrapolation and underreactions. We illustrate these mechanisms in a microfounded macroeconomic model, which generates expectations consistent with the survey data, and show that asymmetric attention increases business cycle fluctuations. (JEL C53, D83, D84, E23, E27, E32)