ORGANIZATIONAL ATTENTION: A METAPHOR FOR A CORE COGNITIVE PROCESS

Organizational attention is an underdeveloped construct that can account for a variety of organizational phenomena. Attention is the means by which individuals select and process a limited amount of input from the enormous amount of internal and environmental inputs bombarding the senses, memories and other cognitive processes. This article develops a coherent theory of organizational attention, drawing on Cornelissenșs domain-interactive metaphor model. Topics that form the building blocks of individual attention research, including selective and divided attention, automatic versus controlled processes, attention and memory, attention and learning, are examined in terms of their applicability to the organizational context.