1069: Exploring Top-Executive Cognition in Business Ecosystems (12365)

Sunday, August 11, 2024

17:45 – 19:15 CT (GMT-5/UTC-5)

Location: Sheraton: Superior B

Session Number: 1069
Symposium (panel)
Orientation: Research
Shareable link: https://cdmcd.co/KpJxBw

Organizer(s)

AS

Anastasiya Shylina

U. of Passau, Germany

Handouts

Panelist(s)

HV

Henk W. Volberda

Amsterdam Business School, U. of Amsterdam, Netherlands
TV

Timo Olavi Vuori

Aalto U., Finland

Organizer(s)

MM

Moritz Maier

U. of Passau
UA

Urszula Ayache

ESCP Business School, France

Panelist(s)

TC

Theresa Cho

Seoul National U., Korea, Republic of
DG

Daniel Gamache

U. of Georgia, United States
LG

Lorenz Graf-Vlachy

TU Dortmund U., Germany
MH

Mark P. Healey

U. of Manchester, United Kingdom
MM

Michael J. Mannor

U. of Notre Dame, United States
MT

Mary Tripsas

U. of California, Santa Barbara, United States

Celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Upper Echelons Theory (UET), this symposium delves into the evolving role of top-executives’ cognition in the novel, unique, and increasingly important context of business ecosystems. UET posits that executives’ background—their experiences, preferences, and dispositions—significantly shape organizational outcomes. We reexamine UET by exploring how the nature and strategic implications of top-executives’ cognition in business ecosystems differ from standard assumptions in the extant literature, given the idiosyncrasies of business ecosystems such as their meta-organizational structure and the focus on collaborative value creation and shared value distribution. The symposium explores three interrelated themes: the unique challenges that business ecosystems pose to strategic leaders, the idiosyncratic processes and structures of executive cognition influencing sensemaking and decision-making in these ecosystems, and the use of so-far underleveraged streams of cognitive psychology and linguistics to theoretically and empirically explore the implications of top executives’ characteristics in these contexts.