Suchergebnisse

Commentators Washington (2019) and Tiffin (2019) point out that the individual vs. collective dichotomy is much more complex than what is considered in the target article. This commentary will focus on why individuals are more important than collectives. Species differences in cognition and emotional processes and individuals' feelings and experiences need to be taken into account.

The soft-bodied cephalopods including octopus, cuttlefish, and squid are broadly considered to be the most cognitively advanced group of invertebrates. Previous research has demonstrated that these large-brained molluscs possess a suite of cognitive attributes that are comparable to those found in some vertebrates, including highly developed perception, learning, and memory abilities. Cephalopods are also renowned for performing sophisticated feats of flexible behaviour, which have led to claims of complex cognition such as causal reasoning, future planning, and mental attribution. Hypotheses to explain why complex cognition might have emerged in cephalopods suggest that a combination of predation, foraging, and competitive pressures are likely to have driven cognitive complexity in this group of animals. Currently, it is difficult to gauge the extent to which cephalopod behaviours are underpinned by complex cognition because many of the recent claims are largely based on anecdotal evidence. In this review, we provide a general overview of cephalopod cognition with a particular focus on the cognitive attributes that are thought to be prerequisites for more complex cognitive abilities. We then discuss different types of behavioural flexibility exhibited by cephalopods and, using examples from other taxa, highlight that behavioural flexibility could be explained by putatively simpler mechanisms. Consequently, behavioural flexibility should not be used as evidence of complex cognition. Fortunately, the field of comparative cognition centres on designing methods to pinpoint the underlying mechanisms that drive behaviours. To illustrate the utility of the methods developed in comparative cognition research, we provide a series of experimental designs aimed at distinguishing between complex cognition and simpler alternative explanations. Finally, we discuss the advantages of using cephalopods to develop a more comprehensive reconstruction of cognitive evolution. ; A.K.S. was supported by an Endeavour Research Fellowship funded by the Australian Government and was also supported by a Newton International Fellowship funded by the Royal Society. P.A. received support from the Cambridge Philosophical Society (Research Studentship Ref. 123 S52/002/19). A European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant Agreement No. 3399933 was awarded to N.S.C., which supported both M.B and N.S.C.

Increasingly, thoughtful managers recognize the role of knowledge and learning in corporate action and performance. Concurrently, a new field, management and organization cognition (MOC), has emerged producing useful insights and findings. Thus far, empirical studies have largely focused on single cases or actors, using often archival data and sometimes ambiguous methods. To advance the field will require pragmatic tools for eliciting data on thinking in real organizations and for conducting rigorous and more comparative studies of management and organization cognitions. This paper describes a method for comparatively studying real-life managerial thinking, defined here as the respective manager's beliefs about key phenomena and their efficacy links in their strategic and operative situation. The applicability of such a definition will depend on the requirements of research at hand. The payoff is that, thus defined, key elements in managerial and organizational cognitions can be usefully captured by cognitive mapping, an established approach in MOC research. The approach contains, first, a method for eliciting comparison-enabling interview data of several subjects. Then, using researcher-based, interpretive standardization of the individual natural discourses, databases of standard concepts and causal links, constituting the cause map elements, are distilled. This facilitates a text-oriented description of the thinking patterns of single actors like managers or organizational groups, which can be used in traditional-type mapping studies, which typically assume unitary or quasi-unitary actors. However, the method is intended for comparative analyses, e.g., for pinpointing the cognitive differences or similarities across organizational actors or for constructing and comparing groups, assumed cognitively homogenous. Also, it is applicable for longitudinal studies or aggregated, e.g., industry-level, descriptions of MOC. A PC application is available for the technique, although many of the processing tasks are amenable to general-purpose relational database software. The paper presents a study case comparing the cognitive structures of managers in two interrelated industries in terms of their concept bases and causal beliefs. The objective was to understand the substance of management thinking, as well as the formative logic behind how managers come to think in the shared ways. It is shown that patterns of industry-typical core causal thinking, manifestations of a dominant logic or recipe, can be located, operationalized and comparatively analyzed with this method. Substantively, the contents of management thinking are typically products of complex long-term mechanisms. These consist, first, of organizational problem-solving, recurrently facing a specific, adequately stable constellation of strategic tasks and environment elements, similar within industries and systematically different across them, and, second, of various social processes, which directly transfer and influence management thinking. The paper concludes with discussing the cause mapping method and suggests some options for further studies.

Drawing from case study research conducted at a UK-based European works council, this article explores the dynamics of cross-national labour relations using a theoretical framework that the author calls 'comparative ethnomethodology'. The merging of qualitatively distinct national industrial relations systems into one geographical space is identified as a key social psychological obstacle to labour internationalism. When brought together in a transnational context, workers' representatives frequently suffer from 'dissonant cognitions' in consequence of the absence of commonly constituted 'background assumptions'. This dynamic is exemplified by the interpersonal relations between the British and Dutch delegations in the case study European works council.The study has implications with respect to the debates on the problems, prospects and possibilities of labour internationalism.

This book explores afresh the long-standing interest, and emphasis on, the `special' capacities of primates. Some of the recent discoveries of the higher cognitive abilities of other mammals and also birds challenge the concept that primates are special and even the view that the cognitive ability of apes is more advanced than that of nonprimate mammals and birds. It is therefore timely to ask whether primates are, in fact, special and to do so from a broad range of perspectives. Divided into five sections this book deals with topics about higher cognition and how it is manifested in different species, and also considers aspects of brain structure that might be associated with complex behavior

Trois questions me retiennent, qui sont liées entre elles et peuvent être exprimées très sommairement ainsi: la science a-t-elle connu un développement différent dans la Grèce antique et dans la Chine antique ? Si tel est le cas, peut-on savoir pourquoi ? Et que peut nous apprendre une semblable enquête pour ce qui touche, beaucoup plus généralement, le problème de la construction sociale de la réalité et les rapports entre culture et cognition?L'analyse des prsupposs implicitement contenus dans le mode de formulation de ces questions nous permettra de prciser plusieurs problmes d'ordre mthodologique, de dissiper quelques malentendus possibles et de marquer les limites des avances que l'on peut esprer sur ces sujets. Je voudrais d'abord dfinir clairement ce que j'entends par « science » dans ce contexte.

This thesis is a comparative study of how elites in Sweden and Poland approach and make sense of EU membership. It begins with the observation that the public debates in several EU member countries are becoming increasingly politicized around a dichotomy, i.e. enthusiasm and skepticism vis-à-vis European integration. Whereas a lot of research in this field covers the characteristics of the European integration process itself, fewer studies focus upon the cognitive complexity involved in national strategic policy choices. The aim of this thesis is to explore, compare and contrast the organizational and cognitive aspects of how Sweden and Poland entered the EU and thereby to contribute to an understanding of how national policymakers in Europe believe that national and supranational integration can work together. The theoretical point of departure is Stein Rokkan's model of political integration, which emphasizes the importance of functional and territorial political cleavages in the development of modern European nation states. The model is used to identify political actors and structures that are transnationalizing forces in Europe and to determine in what ways they form a challenge to national governments in the process of adaptation to the EU. Representing different theoretical points of intersection in the Rokkanian model, these challenges are defined as Integration, Trade and Industry, Functional Regionalism and Territorial Regionalism. The empirical analysis builds on these theoretical categories and covers three different areas. First, the ways in which adaptation to the EU was organized by the governments of Sweden (1988-1994) and Poland (1998-2004) are scrutinized. Second, documents concerning the strategic policy deliberation of both organizations are analyzed in the light of Rokkanian integration categories. Third, the results of two sets of research interviews, one in each country, are analyzed. A major conclusion drawn in the study is that Rokkanian integration theory holds the key to an understanding of how national policymakers believe that European integration can be segmented and how supranational integration in the economic sphere can evolve separately from other areas of social and political integration. Although from very different countries and political experiences, elites in Sweden and Poland show remarkable cognitive similarities. Another contribution to a cross-national understanding of adaptation to the EU is the cognitive model, which is developed on the basis of empirical study. The model expands upon and goes beyond the simple dichotomy of Enthusiasts and Skeptics in the discussion about European integration. Two new categories are introduced and defined as Voluntarists and Pragmatists. The argument is that new cognitive categories are necessary to improve the description and analysis of how national policy makers in Europe set up long-term political goals and manage complex issues in the process of European integration.