IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jomstd/v29y1992i1p35-47.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Expertise And Problem Categorization: The Role Of Expert Processing In Organizational Sense‐Making

Author

Listed:
  • David V. Day
  • Robert G. Lord

Abstract

Our purpose is to understand more fully the role of managerial cognition in organizations. As such, we adopted an experimental approach in studying the use of expert processing in the categorization of organizational problems. We compared the problem categories of 38 chief executive officers (CEOs) in the machine tool industry (experts) with those of 30 MBA students (novices). The results of a problem sorting task indicated that experts tended to categorize the ill‐structured problems significantly faster than novices. Experts also had greater variance in the number of categories used and they incorporated more problem information. Follow‐up analyses revealed that the number of categories was negatively related to experts’age and positively related to the number of processes and services offered by their respective organizations. These findings are consistent with the contention that experts rely on well‐developed, context‐dependent heuristics in the early stages of their decision‐making. It is argued that such heuristics allow organizational experts to make sense of strategic issues quickly, and respond in an efficient and effective manner.

Suggested Citation

  • David V. Day & Robert G. Lord, 1992. "Expertise And Problem Categorization: The Role Of Expert Processing In Organizational Sense‐Making," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 35-47, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:29:y:1992:i:1:p:35-47
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00651.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00651.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1467-6486.1992.tb00651.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrea Furlan & Ambra Galeazzo & Adriano Paggiaro, 2019. "Organizational and Perceived Learning in the Workplace: A Multilevel Perspective on Employees’ Problem Solving," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 280-297, March.
    2. S. R. Singhvi & Rajat Gera, 2005. "Problem Formulation and Categorization: An Empirical Study of Marketing Problems in an Organization," Management and Labour Studies, XLRI Jamshedpur, School of Business Management & Human Resources, vol. 30(2), pages 121-138, May.
    3. Annelore Huyghe & Mirjam Knockaert & Evila Piva & Mike Wright, 2016. "Are researchers deliberately bypassing the technology transfer office? An analysis of TTO awareness," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 589-607, October.
    4. Arpan Kumar Kar & Amit Kumar Kushwaha, 2023. "Facilitators and Barriers of Artificial Intelligence Adoption in Business – Insights from Opinions Using Big Data Analytics," Information Systems Frontiers, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 1351-1374, August.
    5. William L. Cron & Sascha Alavi & Johannes Habel & Jan Wieseke & Hanaa Ryari, 2021. "No conversion, no conversation: consequences of retail salespeople disengaging from unpromising prospects," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(3), pages 502-520, May.
    6. Mauksch, Stefanie & von der Gracht, Heiko A. & Gordon, Theodore J., 2020. "Who is an expert for foresight? A review of identification methods," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jomstd:v:29:y:1992:i:1:p:35-47. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0022-2380 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.