Farzad Moussavi

Emergence of Organizational Attributions: The Role of a Shared Cognitive Schema

Daft and Weick (1984) suggest that individual-level interpretations of top strategic managers can be expected to converge into an organizational interpretation because managers use identical cognitive schemata when making their personal interpretations. The primary purpose of this paper is to adapt the well-accepted interpersonal attribution schema to an organizational context to determine whether Daft and Weicks convergence argument is plausible. We conclude that the common phenomena of informational equivocality and bias make the existence of shared schemata a necessary but not sufficient condition for the convergence of interpretations. Therefore, studies in the organizational literature which rely on the convergence argument fail to sufficiently establish a linkage between individual cognition and organizational action.

Integrating social and financial goals toward more balanced new technology decisions

Abstract Many practitioners would agree that, in order to maximize long-term shareholder wealth, social costs should be incorporated into financial decisions. More than constant reminders, they need concrete methods by which to move beyond their traditional ways. This article presents a capital budgeting model that considers both social and financial dimensions of new technology decisions. The model, utilizing the multiple dimensional scaling procedure, allows decision makers to incorporate the uncertainties of costs from new technology borne by the firm and society.

Beyond Organizational Rationality: Toward a more Relevant Image of Organizations

A simple and general model of organizations is proposed as the foundation for a course in which the organization is not treated as an all-rational entity. The model defines organizations as probability distributions of decisions along a rational-political continuum, achieving a balance between the simple but inadequate rational metaphor and the rich but complicated multimetaphor approach. The management course on which this model is superimposed, in turn, achieves a balance between convenience and relevance.