Organizational attention coordination, cue heterogenity, and production handovers in a control room of a cement plant

We used an interpretive, grounded theory approach to study how future oriented attention coherence unraveled and was accomplished across time, teams and the chain of command in a cement manufacturing plant. We employed semi-structured interviews, archival documents, and participant observation to conduct an in-depth longitudinal investigation stretching over three years. Our findings revealed how an organization with a transient population of boundedly rational employees develops different forms of attention quality in a context characterized by information heterogeneity. One form of attention quality was characterized by stable and retrospective processes of attention whereas another form was characterized by vivid and prospective processes of attention. In the first form of attention quality, people avoid attending to weak and heterogeneous cues whereas in the second form people actively seek such cues. The construct 'attention elasticity' constitutes our main finding. It captures the ability within and across teams to shift (or not) from one form of attention quality to another. These findings have important implications for theory and practice because little is still known about how the quality of attention influence the ability of organizations to leverage heterogeneous information and coordinate attention to emerging threats across time and levels.