A Distributed Framework for the Study of Organizational Cognition in Meetings

Astrid Jensen; Davide Secchi; Thomas Wiben Jensen

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2022.769007

A Distributed Framework for the Study of Organizational Cognition in Meetings

Front Psychol. 2022 May 18:13:769007. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.769007. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Astrid Jensen¹, Davide Secchi¹, Thomas Wiben Jensen²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Language and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, University of Southern Denmark, Slagelse, Denmark.
² Department of Language and Communication, Faculty of Humanities, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.

Abstract

This paper proposes an analytical framework for the analysis of organizational cognition that borrows from distributed and ecological cognition. In so doing, we take a case study featuring a decision on the topic of agreeing on a set point in the agenda of a meeting. It is through the analysis of a few minutes of video-recording used in the case that enables us to demonstrate the power of applying distributed and ecological cognition to organizing processes. Cognitive mechanism, resources, and processes are identified within this combined framework. Mechanisms are described as "socio-material" (CM1)-where "people" and "artifacts" are the related cognitive resources-and as "conceptual" (CM2)-with "group" identity, "topic" understanding, meaning of "procedures," and perception of "time" as resources. Processes are defined as "coupling," "de-coupling," and "un-coupled" depending on the type of relation in place. Finally, the paper presents an agent-based computational simulation to demonstrate the potentials of operationalizing this approach.

Keywords: agent-based modeling; complex adaptive systems; distributed cognition; ecological cognition; multimodal interaction analysis (MMIA); organizational cognition.