Models of Cognition, the Contextualisation of Knowledge and Organisational Theory

This paper examines the importance of cognitivefoundations for theories of organisationalbehaviour. Three different conceptions of humancognition and reasoning are examined: theinformation processing, situated learning andcultural-historical perspectives. The papershows how each conception of cognition leads toa different understanding of organisationalroutines and organisational problem-solving, aswell as to the adoption of a differentempirical methodology for observingorganisational behaviour and for testinghypotheses about the nature of routines andproblem-solving. The paper demonstrates that ofthe three approaches to human cognition, onlythe cultural-historical one gives rise to anunderstanding of organisational knowledge asembedded within a wider cultural andinstitutional setting. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001