S.2.2 Understanding strategic problems

Question 1

Strategic cognition as perception: Cognitive problem

Answer 1

Strategists are permanently trapped by bounded rationality and by their incomplete and imperfect perceptions of the environment. From a practical standpoint, the challenge is to minimize the gap between their flawed perceptions and the reality of their environment. (Smircich & Stubbart)

Question 2

Strategic cognition as perception: Evidence-based management

Answer 2

• (1) use of scientific principles in decisions and management processes,
• (2) systematic attention to organizational facts,
• (3) advancements in practitioner judgment through critical thinking and decision aids that reduce bias and enable fuller use of information, and
• (4) ethical considerations including effects on stakeholders.” (Rousseau)

Question 3

Strategic cognition as enactment: Cognitive problem

Answer 3

Strategists do not simply perceive their environments, but generate their picture of reality through intellectual efforts and social action. The world is essentially ambiguous. There are no threats or opportunities ”out there” in the environment unless strategists have
created meaning to events, objects, and situations so that they are meaningful and become enacted as a new business opportunity.

Question 4

Strategic cognition as enactment: Constructing strategies as lenses for sensemaking

Answer 4

• Stimulating individual creativity and reasoning;
• training managers in reflective and critical thinking;
• building communities of practice
• keeping a free market of ideas alive

Question 5

Strategic cognition as argumentation: “Nothing is better than a well thought trough argument”

Answer 5

• useful tool for the development and the analysis of a rational justification
• a claim: needs background knowledge and data
• the data needs a warrant with backing
• rebuttals for alternative policies

Question 6

Strategic cognition as confusion: Cognitive problem

Answer 6

• managers are biased
• seeing problems with their own background and knowledge experience, often accpomanied with conservatism or the failure to change their own mind
• leads to false interpretation or decisions
• decision maker overestimate their abillities to handle a strategic situation