Organizational Action Between Individual and Collective Knowledge: Case for Application of Cognitive Paradigm in Dealing with Organizational Complexity

This theoretical paper argues that a proper way to deal with the problem of organizational complexity is through the paradigm of managerial and organizational cognition and proposes a three part framework for analysis of organizational dynamics. The perspective of organizational complexity arises from the notion that a number of different kinds of activities are being carried out simultaneously by different people or groups of people. Therefore, there is no single authoritative locus of control that sets tasks and controls results for everybody. The paper proposes that in order to generate helpful theories of organizational action in such context we should be adapting a cognitive paradigm which define ways in which people in organizations define the situation, become aware of alternative courses of action, evaluate the consequences of these actions, and consider the significance of the action in a socially constructed world. The paper argues that there are three crucial tension that would benefit from the application of complexity theory in organizational studies: the tension between subjects and their surroundings which give rise to its unpredictability, the tension from discrepancy and ambiguity of interpretations of organizational members and the tension between individual interpretations and coherent and meaningful modus operandi set by the management.