Designing Organizations: Does Expertise Matter?

From an organizational cognition standpoint, we approach organizational design as an ongoing creative sensemaking process. This study examined the role of expertise in the cognitive problem-solving patterns underlying design processes and the resulting organizational forms. The simulated problem eli...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of business and psychology Vol. 23; no. 3/4; pp. 87 - 101
Main Authors Sánchez-Manzanares, Miriam, Rico, Ramón, Gil, Francisco
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Boston Springer Science + Business Media, Inc 01.12.2008
Springer US
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Behavioral Science and Psychology
Business and Management
Business structures
Cognition
Cognition & reasoning
Cognitive models
Community and Environmental Psychology
Decision analysis
Design
Design analysis
Industrial and Organizational Psychology
Knowledge representation
Organization theory
Organizational behavior
Organizational structure
Organizational theory
Personality and Social Psychology
Problem solving
Psychology
Sense making
Social psychology
Social Sciences
Structuralism
Studies
Training
Expert-novice study
Organizational cognition
Mental models
Organizational design
Protocol analysis
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Summary:From an organizational cognition standpoint, we approach organizational design as an ongoing creative sensemaking process. This study examined the role of expertise in the cognitive problem-solving patterns underlying design processes and the resulting organizational forms. The simulated problem elicited the mental models applied by naives, novices, and experts in designing an organization. The thinking-aloud protocol analysis revealed quantitative and qualitative expert/nonexpert differences in problem-solving strategies, the time spent on problem representation, and the justifications and difficulties expressed in the course of the design process. In addition, our results showed that naives created organizations consistent with mechanistic structures, while novices and experts created organizations consistent with organic structures. We discuss the implications of these findings for the understanding of the cognitive basis of organizational design and the development of effective training programs.
ISSN:0889-3268
1573-353X
DOI:10.1007/s10869-008-9076-y