Co-adaptive phenomena are defined as those in which the environment affects human behavior and at the same time, human behavior affects the environment. Such phenomena pose theoretical and methodological challenges and are difficult to study in traditional ways. However, some aspects of the interaction between people and technology only make sense when such phenomena are taken into account. In this dissertation, I postulate that the use of information technology is a coadaptive phenomenon. I also argue that customizable software provides a particularly good testbed for studying co-adaptation because individual patterns of use are encoded and continue to influence user behavior over time. The possible customizations are constrained by the design of the software but may also be modified by users in unanticipated ways, as they appropriate the software for their own purposes. Because customization patterns are recorded in files that can be shared among users, these customizations may act ...

Abstract: Environmental scanning is the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's external environment, the knowledge of which would assist management in planning the organization's future course of action. Depending on the organization's beliefs about environmental analyzability and the extent that it intrudes into the environment to understand it, four modes of scanning may be differentiated: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, enacting, and searching. We analyze each mode of scanning by examining its characteristic information needs, information seeking, and information use behaviors. In addition, we analyze organizational knowing processes by considering the sensemaking, knowledge creating and decision

. Computer-based support for decision-making, with the use of Decision Support Systems (DSS), has focused mainly on primary decision processes, i.e. data and model manipulation, and failed to take explicitly into account the need to model the secondary decision processes, i.e. support on how to decide about the use of specific data and models. The main premise of the present paper is that effective, intelligent support of the secondary decision processes could be developed by exploiting the possibilities of coupling DSS and expert system (ES) approaches. Although such an integration has been flourishing in the literature, with the advent of Intelligent Decision Support Systems (IDSS), no efforts have been made to examine its potential for enhancing the support to secondary decision processes. The paper presents an IDSS architecture that models in a systematic way the decision-making process and illustrates the use of the architecture for the development of an intelligent system for business forecasting. RESUME: Les processus de decision soutenu par l' informatique et avec l' utilisation d'un Systeme de Support de Decision (DSS) s' est axe principalement sur le processus de decision primaire c-a-d sur les manipulations de modeles et les informations et a echoue de prendre explicitement en consideration le besoin de structurer des modeles sur les processus de decision secondaire c-a-d le base sur laquelle exploitite des informations specifiques et des modeles. L' idee principale de cette etude est qu' une aide efficace et informatique des processus de decision secondaire peut se developper en exploitant conjointement les possibilites du DDS et de l' ES (Expert Systems). Quoique que cette integration a ete florrissante dans la litterature et malgre l' avenement de syst...

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In the call for proposals, the Canadian Forces Leadership Institute’s (CFLI) question related to the topic of decision-making was as follows: Decision-making: How do senior leaders make decisions? Because decision-making is such a fundamental aspect of leadership, there is a need to better understand decision making within both an organizational setting and while experiencing extreme or adverse circumstances. Explorations could include: strategic decision making; enhancing decision making skills outside the experiential model; generalizability to flag and general officers; implications for group/team decision making; and/or a review of the relevant literatures. In response, the contribution of the paper will be to consider the problem of senior officer decision-making through multiple lenses of contemporary management literature. This exercise will unfold in three general parts:-discussion of the general theoretical progression of decision making thought in the management literature-creating a model of CF senior officer decision making, informed by selections from this this theory-consideration of managerial implications and suggestions for future research for the CF within this domain3

This paper is work in progress and I am thankful for any comments and suggestions regarding it. Errors and omissions might remain in the paper and the intention is not to implicate any of them to the many scholars that have moved the field forward. Please do not quote without prior permission from the author. This paper examines how managers create and develop strategy in practice. It reports findings of an in-depth investigation of managerial activities and associated learning dynamics in strategy creation, the generation and development of radically new strategies. Managerial and learning activities on different organizational levels, their influence on strategy development, and relationship to strategic change are examined. A dual longitudinal case methodology, including a single in-depth case study combined with a multiple retrospective case study is used, involving four multinational companies. The findings show a twofold character of strategy creation including an adaptive and a creative strategy motor of strategic change involving fundamentally different learning dynamics, reflecting their diverse location and social embeddedness. Adaptive learning dynamics were based on exploitation and refinement of prevailing industry and resource structures and involved a deductive reasoning or sensemaking as regards strategy, including knowledge assimilation activities such as formal intelligence and routine experiences. Creative learning dynamics evolved in the periphery of the organizations and were more remote from existing values and beliefs. They predominantly involved exploration and inductive sensemaking, including activities like informal noticing and creative experiments. The exploration/exploitation trade off interaction between the two strategy motors resulted in tension, which finally triggered strategic change.

TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATED DISTRIBUTED TEAMS Les chemins de prise de décision dans les équipes à distance auto-organisées Research-in-Progress

Over the years, aligning IT and business strategies has remained an important, but sometimes elusive, challenge for executives. At the same time it has garnered quite an interest among the research community. This paper seeks to provide one explanation why alignment efforts struggle. The paper first addresses the distinction between strategies as plans and strategies as patterns in decisions and actions based on a multiple case study in the financial industry. By separating intended and realized strategies, alignment can then be discussed not only in traditional terms of closing a gap, but also in terms of what is really being aligned? It is argued that alignment efforts and alignment research often are occupied with aligning intended strategies disregarding potential differences between what is intended and what is realized. It is suggested that an increased focus on realized strategies may be beneficial for alignment efforts.