The DOI matches its Crossref record; 18 of the 18 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Renewing Research on Problemistic Search—A Review and Research Agenda
Open accessAbstract
Problemistic search theory, with its roots in the Carnegie School tradition, describes a behaviorally plausible process by which firms learn from performance feedback. A firm’s recognition of performance below aspirations leads to search for a solution to the problem, resulting in change intended to restore performance to the aspired level. The concept of problemistic search has diffused broadly in the management literature—it is a central theoretical concept in a broad variety of organizational theories and an important explanation of a wide variety of organizational behaviors and outcomes. We review the literature and argue that the development of the theory has not kept pace with the breadth of the unfolding literature. We identify six critical issues with extant research that can be traced back to a continued (over)reliance on the initial conceptualization of problemistic search. To address these issues and to revitalize research, we propose a research agenda premised on a more central role for cognition in the theory and the need for greater emphasis on a process perspective of problemistic search.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979) · Econometrica · doi:10.2307/1914185 · Cited by 48,524
Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning
March, J. G. (1991) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.2.1.71 · Cited by 21,942 · cited 4×
“This issue is, moreover, related to the question previously discussed, on the extent to which problemistic search is predominantly exploitative, as risk taking is more often viewed a dimension of exploration (March, 1991).”
InfluentialA theory of social comparison processes
Festinger, L. (1954) · Human Relations · doi:10.1177/001872675400700202 · Cited by 20,926
Advances in prospect theory: Cumulative representation of uncertainty
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1992) · Journal of Risk and Uncertainty · doi:10.1007/bf00122574 · Cited by 15,467
Knowledge of the firm, combinative capabilities, and the replication of technology
Kogut, B., & Zander, U. (1992) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.3.3.383 · Cited by 12,939
Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective
Argyris, C., & Schön, D. A. (1997) · Reis · doi:10.2307/40183951 · Cited by 11,113 · cited 1×
“The explicit claim in the literature in the Carnegie school tradition, but also common across other bodies of management scholarship (e.g. Argyris & Schön, 1978; Chandler, 1962) is that “poor performance is actually necessary to catalyze the search for new practices in an organization” (Bolton,…”
Laursen, K., & Salter, A. (2006) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.507 · Cited by 6,324
Rational choice and the structure of the environment.
Simon, H. A. (1956) · Psychological Review · doi:10.1037/h0042769 · Cited by 5,919
Reconceptualizing Organizational Routines as a Source of Flexibility and Change
Feldman, M. S., & Pentland, B. T. (2003) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/3556620 · Cited by 4,020 · cited 4×
“We propose an eclectic approach that allows organizational information processing to draw upon managerial cognition, just as Feldman and Pentland (2003) propose that individual agency plays an important role in organizational routines.”
InfluentialKnee-deep in the big muddy: a study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action
Staw, B. M. (1976) · Organizational Behavior and Human Performance · doi:10.1016/0030-5073(76)90005-2 · Cited by 2,061 · cited 5×
“current course of action when performance below aspiration leads to perceived identity threats (Brockner, Houser, Birnbaum, Lloyd, Deitcher, Nathanson, & Rubin, 1986), threats to the perception of self-efficacy (Zhang & Baumeister, 2006), or the need to self-justify behavior (Staw, 1976).”
InfluentialReconceptualizing the Determinants of Risk Behavior
Sitkin, S. B., & Pablo, A. L. (1992) · The Academy of Management Review · doi:10.2307/258646 · Cited by 2,057
Cognitive change, strategic action, and organizational renewal
Barr, P. S., Stimpert, J. L., & Huff, A. S. (1992) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.4250131004 · Cited by 1,290
Top executive commitment to the status quo: Some tests of its determinants
Hambrick, D. C., Geletkanycz, M. A., & Fredrickson, J. W. (1993) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.4250140602 · Cited by 1,058
Balancing Search and Stability: Interdependencies Among Elements of Organizational Design
Rivkin, J. W., & Siggelkow, N. (2003) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.49.3.290.12740 · Cited by 900
Eggers, J. P., & Kaplan, S. (2009) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.1080.0401 · Cited by 774 · cited 1×
“Research on organizational adaptation suggests that cognitive representations play an important role in guiding search (Eggers & Kaplan, 2009; Gavetti & Levinthal, 2000) and the evaluation of alternatives (Knudsen & Levinthal, 2007; Rerup, 2006).”
A Behavioral Theory of the Firm—40 Years and Counting: Introduction and Impact
Argote, L., & Greve, H. R. (2007) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.1070.0280 · Cited by 606
Remembrance of Things Past? The Dynamics of Organizational Forgetting
Holan, P. M. D., & Phillips, N. (2004) · Management Science · doi:10.1287/mnsc.1040.0273 · Cited by 556
Search on Rugged Landscapes: An Experimental Study
Billinger, S., Stieglitz, N., & Schumacher, T. R. (2010) · doi:10.2139/ssrn.1711743 · Cited by 54
Cited by
Content and process: Organizational conflict and decision making
Gaba, V., & Joseph, J. (2023) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1227966 · Cited by 5
Metadata
- Authors
- Posen, H. E., Keil, T., Kim, S., & Meissner, F. D.
- Venue
- Academy of Management Annals
- Publisher
- Academy of Management
- Published
- 2018-01
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 208-251
- ISSN
- 1941-6067 (ISSN-L)
- 1941-6520
- OpenAlex
- W2765774197
- Cited by
- 462
- References
- 18
- FWCI
- 37.64
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
