Editorial Introduction to the Special Issue: Thinking in Organizations

This special issue of the Journal of Management Studies is devoted to a topic which is rapidly becoming established as one of the central concerns of researchers within the interrelated fields of organization studies and management studies: the topic of managerial and organizational cognition. The purpose of this introductory article is to outline the key themes to be addressed and to contextualize the various contributions within the wider literature. That interest in this rapidly developing area of study is on the ascendancy is evidenced by the growing number of special issues of journals (e.g. Eden, 1992; Meindl et al., 1994, Porac and Thomas, 1989), edited books and monographs (e.g. Cummings and Staw, 1990; Huff, 1990; Sims and Gioia, 1986; Weick, 1995), and informal conferences and networks, devoted to an increasingly diverse range of organizational phenomena, as viewed from a cognitive perspective. Moreover, the formation of the Managerial and Organizational Cognition Interest Group within the American Academy of Management represents a significant landmark in the development of cognitive approaches to the analysis of behaviour in organizations.