Abstract
Contemporary organizations face three interrelated, but analytically distinguishable, challenges. First, they should be alert to mistakes that could be catastrophic. Second, they need to allocate attention, especially to correct past mistakes and to make accurate predictions about future developments. Third, they should be innovative, able to stand out from existing categories while being recognized as outstanding. This project investigates these cognitive challenges with the aim of developing a comprehensive sociological approach to study the social properties of cognition. Research on error detection, attention allocation, and recognizant innovation will be conducted in three distinct settings strategically chosen so the scale and complexity of the performance challenges increases across the cases. The research question that cuts across the socio-cognitive challenges asks whether and how diversity contributes to performance. 1) We first test whether social context, understood at the most basic level as the composition of a small collectivity, affects the cognitive activity of pricing. To do so, I use experimental market methods to test whether ethnic and gender diversity deflate price bubbles by disrupting herding behaviour. 2) The second study tests how the social structure of attention affects valuation. The activities involve error correction and accuracy of prediction in estimates by securities analysts; the method is two-mode network analysis; and the timing, intensity, and diversity of attention networks are the effects to be tested. 3) Whereas my first two tests examine relations among competitors, my third examines relations within and across collaborative teams. In studying the network properties of creativity, the challenge is recognizant innovation, the activity involves recording sessions in the field of music, the method is cultural network analysis, and the effects to be tested are the combined effects of stylistic diversity and social structure.
Project details
Unibo Team Leader: Simone Ferriani
Unibo involved Department/s:
Dipartimento di Scienze Aziendali
Coordinator:
The University Of Warwick(United Kingdom)
Other Participants:
ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - Università di Bologna
(Italy)
Scuola Universitaria Professionale Della Svizzera Italiana
(Switzerland)
Total Eu Contribution: Euro (EUR) 2.492.033,00
Project Duration in months: 60
Start Date:
01/09/2016
End Date:
31/08/2021
This project contributes to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 695256