32,876 research outputs found
Action Plans and Socio-Economic Evolutionary Change
An important challenge to evolutionary economics consists of how to tackle with the dramatic tension between purposeful human action and the âblindnessâ of evolutionary processes. On the one hand, economic action, if rational, has to be planned (which implies purposeful ordering of the means used to achieve objectives). On the other hand, an evolutionary process involves both the emergence of novelties (both intended innovations and unintended consequences of actions) and properties that manifest at meso and macro levels. Some recent papers have insisted on these issues. However, few analytical tools are yet available to cope with both, the analysis of intended dynamic action and âblindâ evolution. In this paper we propose the so-called âaction plan approachâ, a theoretical framework which could be useful for this task. The development of tools that permit us to analyze how individuals construct their plans, the projective (conjectural) and interactive nature of action, and the learning processes involved in âplanning and actingâ, may help us identifying and understanding new sources of complexity of economic processes. The close relationship of the âaction plan approachâ with other systemic conceptual approaches is also highlighted.connections, action plans; novelty; intentionality; evolutionary economic process
Inférences réflexives dans la publicité
Advertisements are so
ubiquitous nowadays that capturing the
addresseeâs attention and maintaining it
long enough for them to be fully
processed have become fundamental
objectives for advertisers. Employing
specific strategies in the design of the
advertisement contributes efficiently to
achieving these goals, getting the
audience not only to attend the
stimulus but also to process it in certain
ways favourable for the advertiser. We
argue that Relevance theory, an
approach to communication built on a
massively modular view of cognition,
offers the right tools to explain the
nature of the interpretative processes
in verbal comprehension. Knowledge of
the relevance-based reflexive
inferential procedures involved in
utterance interpretation allows
advertisers to foresee the addresseeâs
processing behaviour, giving them the
possibility to control it in a such a way
that the intended interpretative effects
are achieved in the desired way
Decoding social intentions in human prehensile actions: Insights from a combined kinematics-fMRI study
Consistent evidence suggests that the way we reach and grasp an object is modulated not
only by object properties (e.g., size, shape, texture, fragility and weight), but also by the
types of intention driving the action, among which the intention to interact with another agent
(i.e., social intention). Action observation studies ascribe the neural substrate of this `intentional'
component to the putative mirror neuron (pMNS) and the mentalizing (MS) systems.
How social intentions are translated into executed actions, however, has yet to be addressed.
We conducted a kinematic and a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
study considering a reach-to-grasp movement performed towards the same object positioned
at the same location but with different intentions: passing it to another person (social
condition) or putting it on a concave base (individual condition). Kinematics showed that individual
and social intentions are characterized by different profiles, with a slower movement
at the level of both the reaching (i.e., arm movement) and the grasping (i.e., hand aperture)
components. fMRI results showed that: (i) distinct voxel pattern activity for the social and the
individual condition are present within the pMNS and the MS during action execution; (ii)
decoding accuracies of regions belonging to the pMNS and the MS are correlated, suggesting
that these two systems could interact for the generation of appropriate motor commands.
Results are discussed in terms of motor simulation and inferential processes as part of a
hierarchical generative model for action intention understanding and generation of appropriate
motor commands
Are Routines Reducible or Mere Cognitive Automatisms? Some contributions from cognitive science to help shed light on change in routines
The aim of this article is to understand permanence and changes inside organizational routines. For this purpose, it seems important to explain how individual and collective memorisation occurs, so as to grasp how knowledge can be converted into routines. Although memorisation mechanisms imply a degree of durability, our procedural and declarative knowledge, and our memorisation processes, evolve so that individuals and organisations can project themselves into the future and innovate. Some authors highlight the necessity of dreaming and forgetting (Bergson 1896); others believe that emotions play a role in our memorisation processes (Damasio 1994). These dimensions are not only important at the individual level but also in an organisational context (Lazaric and Denis 2005; Reynaud 2005; Pentland and Feldman 2005).I review the individual dimension of these memorisation processes, with the Andersonâs distinction between procedural knowledge and declarative knowledge. I discuss the notion of cognitive automatisms in order to show why routines should be investigated beyond their first literal assumption (Bargh, 1997). This leads to a clear understanding of the micro level that underpins organisational flexibility and adaptation (notably the motivational triggers). Within organisations, the memorisation mechanisms are at once similar and diverse. Indeed, organisations use their own filters and mechanisms to generate organisational coordination. Organizational memory has its own dimension as it does not merely consist of the sum of individual knowledge and must be able to survive when individuals leave. Routines depend on the organisational memory implemented and on the procedural knowledge and representations of it (individual and collective representations).Knowledge; memorisation; organizations; individuals
Resistance-driven Innovation? Frontline Public Welfare Workersâ Coping with Top- down Implementation
Employee-based innovation researchers point to the important role of welfare workers in public service innovations. Bureaucratic and New Public Management inspired managerial agendas, still widely present in Nordic welfare organizations have been tied to an increase in feelings of inau- thenticity and use of coping strategies by welfare workers. At the same time, post-NPM principles of collaboration and service tailoring are more in line with professional values of welfare workers. Drawing on a critical realist informed case study comprising qualitative interviews and observations in the Norwegian public welfare and employment services, we describe types of revision and resis- tance practices used by frontline employees when faced with top-down implementation instructions, linking them to different types of innovations. The article adds to literatures on employee-based innovation by conceptualizing resistance practices as value-motivated resistance-driven innovation that may have a function of calibrating public value creation in welfare organizations submerged in bureaucratic and NPM-inspired managerial regime
Action plans and socio-economic evolutionary change
An important challenge to evolutionary economics consists of how to tackle with the
dramatic tension between purposeful human action and the âblindnessâ of evolutionary
processes. On the one hand, economic action, if rational, has to be planned (which implies
purposeful ordering of the means used to achieve objectives). On the other hand, an
evolutionary process involves both the emergence of novelties (both intended innovations and
unintended consequences of actions) and properties that manifest at meso and macro levels.
Some recent papers have insisted on these issues. However, few analytical tools are yet
available to cope with both, the analysis of intended dynamic action and âblindâ evolution. In
this paper we propose the so-called âaction plan approachâ, a theoretical framework which could
be useful for this task. The development of tools that permit us to analyze how individuals
construct their plans, the projective (conjectural) and interactive nature of action, and the
learning processes involved in âplanning and actingâ, may help us identifying and understanding
new sources of complexity of economic processes. The close relationship of the âaction plan
approachâ with other systemic conceptual approaches is also highlighted
Resistance to change. Exploring the convergence of institutions, organizations and the mind toward a common phenomenon
Resistance to change is not a new concept in economic literature (Coch and French 1948, Boulding 1956). However, in the last few decades it has acquired specific connotations and meanings that deserve attention. The first aim of the paper is to analyze how the concept has evolved since its introduction by Lewin (1946) and how it has diversified. Having acknowledged that resistance characterizes institutions, organizations and the mind, we suggest that the convergence toward such phenomenon is not surprising. Indeed, it may be explained by taking the bounds that affect the cognitive and emotional counterparts of economic behavior into account. We finally reinterpret resistance to change as a heuristic that helps manage the natural tendency of human beings to fear, uncertainty and its expected effects.Change - cognitive economics - heuristic - emotions - resistance
Absence of age effects on spontaneous past and future thinking in daily life
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018.Previous research on voluntary mental time travel (i.e., deliberately thinking about the past or future) has resulted in negative age effects. In contrast, studies on spontaneous past thoughts (i.e., involuntary autobiographical memories) have reported small or no age effects. The aim of the present research was to investigate the effects of age on the nature and frequency of spontaneous future thoughts in everyday life. In two studies, we examined whether older adults reported spontaneous future thoughts as often as younger adults, and whether these thoughts were predominantly goal-oriented and less dependent on incidental cues than thoughts about the past. In Study 1, young and old participants kept a diary of spontaneous thoughts of upcoming prospective memory tasks and involuntary autobiographical memories for 2 weeks. In Study 2, a 1-day experience sampling method was used to investigate spontaneous and deliberate task-unrelated future and past thoughts, by having young and old participants complete a questionnaire in response to 30 random signals. In both studies, no age effects were found in the frequency of spontaneous future thoughts, which were reported as frequently as thoughts about the past (Study 2) and referred predominantly to upcoming tasks and goals rather than future events or hypothetical events (Study 2). Results concerning the triggers of reported thoughts provide initial support for the idea that representations of future thoughts may be more activated than memories of past events. Taken together, these results have important implications for research on cognitive ageing, mind-wandering, prospective memory and involuntary autobiographical memories.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
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