A Review of Attention Theories

With trillions of internal company documents circulating in corporate offices everyday, it’s easy to lose sight of priorities by concentrating on the wrong signals. As globalization rapidly expands the amount of information that potentially affects a firm’s activities and performance, an increasing number of managers must confront the essential question: how can they best manage their own attention and that of other subordinates in the organization to ensure appropriate sensitivity and receptivity to what is happening in the farther corners of the business world? This chapter begins peeling the onion by answering a set of fundamental questions: What is attention? What are the economics of attention? How can the organization more effectively regulate the process of attention allocation? The implications for MNEs and the development of global mindsets are discussed along each of these themes.