Strategic Cognition of Operations Executives

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Phadnis, Shardul S.; Sheffi, Yossi; Caplice, Chris; Singh, Mahender
• 署名单位: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1059-1478
• DOI: 10.1111/poms.12781
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 2323-2337
• 关键词: operations strategy; supply chain strategy; MANAGERIAL COGNITION; strategic decision making

摘要

The nature of operations executives' strategic cognition, as the antecedent to their choices about operations strategy, remains underexplored in the literature. This mixed-methods study examines executives' thinking about supply chain strategy through the lens of managerial cognition. Our qualitative study at a pharmaceutical distributor, which examined 25 executives' outlook on the future of the turbulent U.S. healthcare sector and their suggestions for adapting the company's supply chain strategy to that future, suggests that an executive's strategic cognition can be defined by its regulatory focuswhether the executive envisions the future environment in terms of opportunities or threatsand the level of optimism in regards to the envisioned future. We propose a typology that predicts the strategic choices of operations executives based on four types of cognition: pioneering, pushing, protective, and provocative. It describes whether an executive's strategic choices target traditional or novel sources of revenue, and if they seek to influence either the firm's structure and practices or its environment. Our empirical test of the typology using quantitative data collected in a survey of senior operations executives supports the study's propositions associating three of the four types of cognition with their respective preferred strategic choices.