Strategy Safari

MINTZBERG,
AHLSTRAND
, LAMPEL

Cognitive School
The cognitive school analyses in depth the
strategists mind to understand the process of
strategic vision & strategy formation (field of
human cognition).
Provides understanding (why) - actions that
resulted in strategies [knowledge of managers ->
mainly developed by experience]
2 views (wings) - cognitive school:
1st positivistic, objective, a recreation of the world
by understanding cognition (research about mental
limitations)
2nd - subjective - depends on interpretation of reality &
then cognition creates the world (process of
Cognition: the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge
construction).
and
understanding through thought

Cognitive School
Cognition as
Confusion
Herbert Simon, 1950s, analyses
cognition as
confusion.
How limited information-processing capacities of human
-> world becomes complex.
Decision making is not so rational as it seems to be.

Judgmental biases (Makridakas, 1990) have a

direct effect on strategy making, e.g. preferences,
remembering recent information, looking for causeeffect relations.
The types of biases: search for supportive evidence,
inconsistency, conservatism, recency, availability,
anchoring, illusory correlation, selective perception,
regression effects, attribution of success & failure,
optimism, underestimating uncertainty.

Cognitive School
Cognition as
Duhaime & Schwenk,Confusion
1985, analysed how
distorcions can affect acquisition &
divestment decisions.
1. Reasoning by analogy complement company
decisions.
2. Illusion of control can make managers believe
that a business will succeed under their watch.
3. Escalating commitment continue & increasing
investment in the face of poor & declining
outcomes.
4. Single outcome calculation divesment the way
for dealing with a failing unit only alternative.

Cognitive School

Cognition as
Confusion
Myers-Briggs Instrument,
Myers, 1962 Based
on Jungs work.

Cognitive School
Cognition as Information
Processing

Cognitive School

Cognition as Information
Biases in Individual cognition will be theProcessing
result as well of working in

the collective system (organization) and will affect information

processing.
Managers are information workers - problems senior managers
they receive aggregated information (they do not have time ->
results in distortions.
Parallel process model of strategic decision making which
includes:
attention (keeping some information & ignoring other)
encoding (giving meaning to information, emerging and entrenched frames
of interpretation)
storage/retrieval (accepting routines becomes part of memorys individual)
choice (of a decision definitive category)
outcomes (start of feedback).

Decision is an artificial construction required to pass to action; and,

commitment does not necessarily precedes it.

Cognitive School
Cognition as Mapping
Prerequisite for strategic cognition - mental structures
(frames) that organize knowledge.
A label of these mental representations - maps
encourage action (even if wrong).
Establishes what is expected to be seen - people do not pay
attention due to patterns in their immediate experience.

The first type of maps in management: schemas

Represent knowledge at different levels in order to have a
general vision of an issue from rudimentary data.
Involve expectations - mental models can have a significant
impact in an organization -> managers can focus only on one
aspect and not change to another perspective.

The cognitive maps managers create are used to

understand the process of strategy formation.

Cognitive School

Cognition Concept
Knowledge tends to Attainment
be considered tacit (cognitive

psychology not very useful), the mental representations of

strategy making need to be understood as the process of
concept attainment in someones mind.
Simons (1987), judgment, intuition and creativity are
not mysterious concepts -> first two turn into habits which
enable to recognize quick responses / source of insights can
be a mysterious aspect.
Polaroid Camera, the inventor had periods of creative perceptions
(daughter asked why not a picture when it was taken.
The Japanese executive Shimizu thinks that an insight is an
intuitive sensibility that allows someone to understand new
information once it is presented.
The called sixth sense uses memory which has accumulated
knowledge.

4 Premises - Cognitive
School
1. Strategy formation is a cognitive
process that is in the strategists mind,
2. Strategies are born as perspectives
(concepts, maps, frames, schemas)
3. Inputs flow through distorting filters
(1st wing) before decodification by maps.
Interpretations of a world in terms of
perception (2nd wing)
4. Strategies as concepts are difficult to
achieve

Cognitive School
Critique, contribution and
Context
This school has potential
- it analyses minds
distortions and it would be needed to know how
the mind integrates the complex inputs involved.
The cognitive psychology needs development to
provide contributions to field of management
contribution :
developed stages of strategy formation (original
conceptions, reconception of strategies & periods of
clinging to existing strategies)
It is the first of the five schools that recognizes the
importance to understand the human brain