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Cognitive assets are tangible and intangible organizational that constitute sources of the
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The idea of the cognitive assets was the first attempt to address the most relevant organizational assets to be exploited by cognition-driven businesses. The concept of cognitive assets is a reflection on the belief that it is sufficient the acquisition of software, such as for business intelligence or competitive intelligence to ensure that organizations make good decisions.
Organizational cognitive assets comprise four main dimensions: 1) the environmental mechanisms that foster the creation and sharing of explicit knowledge; 2) organizational members’ cognitive capacities; 3) organizational members´ transactional potential (defined as their ability to interact and share knowledge with co-workers); and 4) Analytics and computational methods used by the organization to support decision-making processes.
Although the idea of “collective cognition” has been contested by researchers on the grounds that “cognition belongs to individuals, not organizations”,Eden, C. and Spender, J. C. (1998) Managerial and organizational cognition, Sage, London. there is a growing number of studies in management that address this phenomenon at a group or organizational level. These studies concentrate on cognitive phenomena in and by organizations that impact the organization as a whole. Some conceptualizations stress that the field must embrace the complexities of the two levels (individual and group), which co-exist though interactive processes.Fiol, C. M. (2002). Intraorganizational Cognition. In: Companion to Organizations (Ed, Baum, J. A.) Blackwell, Oxford.
Cognition research in organizations has taken two main approaches: one computational and one interpretive. The computational stream examines the process by which managers and organizations process information and make decisions; the interpretive approach investigates how meaning is created around information in a social context.
The concept of cognitive assets takes both perspectives into account; individuals´ cognitive capacities and organizational decision-making systems are linked to the computational view, whereas the environment and transactional elements are linked to interpretive efforts. As defended by Lant, putting together these two perspectives will deepen our understanding of organizational cognition.
Organizational cognitive assets comprise four main dimensions: 1) the environmental mechanisms that foster the creation and sharing of explicit knowledge; 2) organizational members’ cognitive capacities; 3) organizational members´ transactional potential (defined as their ability to interact and share knowledge with co-workers); and 4) Analytics and computational methods used by the organization to support decision-making processes.
The environment provides regulative (rules) and normative (values and norms) dimensions that govern organizational life. It sets the pre-conditions that allow for the transformation of individual knowledge into collective knowledge put into action. Following Orlikowski,Orlikowski, W. (2002). Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability in Distributed Organizing. Organization Science, 13, 249-273. five sets of activities are important in the organizational environment: (1) sharing identity; (2) interacting face to face; (3) aligning effort; (4) learning by doing; and (5) supporting participation. Managers can increase the effectiveness of knowledge conversions by stimulating these five sets of activities in the areas under their control.
Humans have a knowledge structure (or schema), which “represents organized knowledge about a given concept or type of stimulus”.Fiske, S. T. and Taylor, S. E. (1991) Social Cognition, McGraw Hill, New York. This knowledge structure is a mental template that individuals impose on an information environment to give it form and meaning and to enable subsequent action. That way, it has strong influence on the process of transforming information into action.
The two most commonly studied attributes of knowledge structures are differentiation (the number of dimensions within a knowledge structure) and integration (the degree of interconnectedness among the knowledge structure dimensions).Walsh, J. P. (1995). Managerial and organizational cognition: Notes from a trip down memory lane. Organization Science, 6, 280-321. The higher the differentiation and integration, the more effective the knowledge structure is. Little differentiation leads to a narrow vision, which results in ineffective managerial behavior.Bartunek, J., Gordon, R. and Weathersby, R. (1983). Developing 'complicated' understanding in administrators. Academy of Management Review, 8, 273-284. Differentiation and integration are influenced by personality variables (level of aspiration, job involvement, cognitive complexity) and organizational experience (position in hierarchy, work experience).
The structural dimension of transactional capacity is linked to the various networks within the organization. Social networks and the role of social capital have received an increasing attention in sociology studies over the past few years. There are two main approaches: one that follows the work of Coleman,Coleman, J. S. (1988). Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital. American Journal of Sociology, 94, S95 - S120. which defends that social capital occurs in networks with closure, where the value of social capital resource is communication among members; another approach, deriving from Granovetter and Burt,Burt, R. S. (1992) Structural Holes: The Social Structure of Competition, Harvard University Press, Boston.Granovetter, M. (1973). The Strength of Weak Ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360-1380. defends that social capital occurs in networks without closure where the value of social capital resource is derived from brokering information and exercising control. The seemingly conflicting predictions of these two approaches may be due to the fact that each one has analyzed different environments.Raider, H. and Krackhardt, D. (2002). Intraorganizational Networks. In: Companion to Organizations (Ed, Baum, J. A.) Blackwell, Oxford. But regardless of the closure of social networks, the existence of a network and individuals willing to share information within it (and capture from outside it) is important. Dyer and Nobeoka, for example, defend that a highly interconnected network benefits all members by facilitating knowledge sharing and learning and increasing productivity of members.Dyer, J. H. and Nobeoka, K. (2000). Creating and maintaining a high performance knowledge-sharing network: The Toyota Case. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 345-367.
Operations research, management science and decision science methods can be seen as analytical cognitive processes that help decision-making. These methods serve to increase the efficiency of the knowledge conversion and mobilization processes, increasing managers´ ability to process information and make decisions. That way, they are also important constituents of cognitive assets.
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