Research Seminar: How Employees Learn to Gain Attention in Strategy Interactions

ISM kindly invites you to participate in ISM Research Seminar Getting heard? How Employees Learn to Gain Attention in Strategy Interactions led by a leading Professor of Organization and Management David Seidl (University of Zurich). The Seminar is scheduled to be held on campus, on 17 May 2022 (17:00-18:30), room 410.

Abstract

Building on the recent dynamic Attention Based View (ABV), this paper examines how employees acquire the discursive competence required to elicit senior management attention for their strategic ideas in an open strategy processes. Based on a longitudinal case study, we identify two distinct learning processes. In operant learning, employees learn from direct interactions with senior management, often extending over multiple turns. In vicarious learning, employees learn from observing other employees’ interactions with senior management. The combination of both processes tends to accelerate the acquisition of discursive competence. Together these findings contribute to the dynamic ABV by adding a recognition of how communicative interactions are potential sites for learning and by identifying those aspects of interactions that are conducive to employee learning and those that are not..

Biographical note

David Seidl is Full Professor of Organization and Management at the University of Zurich. He studied Management and Sociology in Munich, London, Witten/Herdecke and Cambridge. He earned his PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2001. He also sits on several Editorial Boards including Organization Theory (Associate Editor), Organization Studies, Scandinavian Journal of Management, Strategic Organization and Organization. Current research focuses on strategy as practice, corporate governance and philosophy of science, which has been published widely in leading international journals. David has (co-) produced several books (including The Cambridge Handbook of Strategy as Practice, The Cambridge Handbook of Open Strategy and The Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics) and several Special Issues (including the seminal Special Issue of Human Relations on “Strategizing: The Challenges of a Practice Perspective”).

Please register online in advance until 15 May, 2022.