An fMRI Investigation of the Neurocognitive Processing of Measures and Strategic Objectives

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Black, Paul W.; Kirwan, Brock; Meservy, Thomas O.; Tayler, William B.; Williams, Jeffrey
• 署名单位: Auburn University System; Auburn University; Brigham Young University; Brigham Young University; Utah System of Higher Education; Utah Valley University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.01405
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 6740-6760
• 关键词: Performance measurement; strategic objective; surrogation; fmri; SPMS

摘要

A central feature of most organizations is the use of measures to represent key elements of performance across multiple strategic objectives. Prior research demonstrates a tendency for individuals to treat these measures as though they are the higher order strategic objectives the measures were intended to represent as opposed to imperfect representations of those strategic objectives-a phenomenon labeled surrogation. We employ an experiment to further understand this phenomenon. In this study, we capture neural activation when processing measures and when processing strategic objectives. We find that, in regions of the brain with greater (less) activation for concrete versus abstract words, brain activation is greater (less) when processing measure phrases versus when processing strategy phrases. We further find evidence that greater brain activity and longer response times are associated with less surrogation. This affirms the notion that increased cognitive involvement can reduce surrogation.