250 word minimum - due by 3pm

human relations 2014, Vol. 67(7) 765 –792

© The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0018726714530014

hum.sagepub.com

human relations

Rethinking the philosophical and theoretical foundations of organizational neuroscience: A critical realist alternative

Mark P Healey1 University of Manchester, UK

Gerard P Hodgkinson University of Warwick, UK

Abstract Stimulated by the growing use of brain imaging and related neurophysiological techniques in psychology and economics, scholars have begun to debate the implications of neuroscience for management and organization studies (MOS). Currently, this debate is polarizing scholarly opinion. At one extreme, advocates are calling for a new neuroscience of organizations, which they claim will revolutionize understanding of a wide range of key processes, with significant implications for management practice. At the other extreme, detractors are decrying the relevance of neuroscience for MOS, primarily on philosophical and ethical grounds. The present article progresses this debate by outlining an intermediate, critical realist position, in which the insights of social neuroscience are one of a number of convergent building blocks that together point toward the need for a more embodied and socially situated view of cognition in management and organizations.

Keywords behavioural microfoundations, leadership, neuroeconomics, philosophy of science, quality of inferences, reductionism

Corresponding author: Gerard P Hodgkinson, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK. Email: [email protected]

530014HUM0010.1177/0018726714530014Human RelationsHealey and Hodgkinson research-article2014

766 Human Relations 67(7)

Using single-dose psychostimulants to manipulate dopamine levels, we have seen modulation of risky decision-making … Therefore, it might be possible to enhance entrepreneurship pharmacologically. (Lawrence et al., 2008: 169)

Neurological assessment might ultimately be used to help facilitate the selection and placement of leaders in organizations. In short, neurological assessment may provide a new ‘microscope’ to look at the biological sources of leader behavior. (Balthazard et al., 2012: 256)

Interestingly, even advocates of applying neuroscience to the work context admit that it is not difficult to discern that approaches to optimize the workforce can potentially be construed as dehumanizing employees … by dehumanizing employees, I mean the neurological modification of employees for the benefit of the organization. (Lindebaum, 2013: 298)

I have to tell you that neuroscience isn’t the panacea it may appear to be. You won’t be able to use brain scanning to help you tell whether your leading R&D scientist has had a genuine eureka moment. Nor will you be able to use a scanner to choose the right CEO to turn your struggling company around. Not next year. Not the year after. Not in our lifetimes. (Gazzaniga, 2006: 66)

Introduction

Scholarly opinion in the field of management and organization studies (MOS) is cur- rently divided concerning the possibilities and pitfalls of neuroscience as a basis for enriching its science and practice. At one extreme, advocates such as Becker et al. (2011) are calling for a new, biologically rooted, subfield that aims to map neural mech- anisms as the prime causes of organizational behaviour (see also Lee et al., 2012; Senior et al., 2011). At the other extreme, scholars are warning that applying neuroscience to MOS is a dangerous distraction (Lindebaum, 2013; McLagan, 2013). Lindebaum and Zundel (2013: 862), for instance, argued that the problems inherent in reducing expla- nations of complex social phenomena to the neurological level make it ‘impossible to logically and consistently correlate’ what is measured in neuroscience to organizational phenomena such as leadership. Similar debates are taking place within the microfoun- dations project in strategy and organization theory, where scholars are considering the insights of neuroscience to explicate the fundamental mechanisms underpinning the actions of economic decision makers at the individual, team, organizational and inter- organizational levels (Gavetti et al., 2007; Hodgkinson and Healey, 2011; Powell, 2011; Powell et al., 2011; Teece, 2007).

It may be tempting to adopt the pragmatic view that MOS scholars should simply get to work with neuroscience and judge the results on their merits. Indeed, there are signs that this is already happening, with a rush to place leaders, managers and entrepreneurs in brain scanners (Balthazard et al., 2012; Hannah et al., 2013; Laureiro-Martínez et al., 2010, 2014; Lawrence et al., 2008). However, as Glimcher (2011) cautions in the context of neuroeconomics, historical attempts to fuse the social and natural sciences are littered with hundreds of papers drawing faulty conclusions because of confusion about basic philosophical issues. With this in mind, it is worth noting that MOS has already experi- enced an aborted foray into neuroscience, based on the earlier body of work known

Healey and Hodgkinson 767

popularly as split-brain research (Gazzaniga, 2006; Mintzberg, 1976; Robey and Taggart, 1981). To avoid a recurrence of such problems, some philosophical and theoretical heavy lifting is required.

In this article, we argue that if MOS scholars are to benefit meaningfully from neu- roscience, they must establish a viable means of engaging with theoretical and empiri- cal developments in this rapidly expanding field, without losing sight of the socially embedded nature of organizational life. Accordingly, we identify two bridging devices that, once in place, should enable more productive and robust exchanges between social neuroscience and MOS. The first is philosophical in nature and concerns the use of critical realism as an epistemological and ontological framework that locates neu- ropsychological processes as one of several significant generative mechanisms that explain behaviour in the workplace. Critical realism helps to avoid problems associ- ated with reductionism and offers emergence as an alternative mode for explaining organizational behaviour with reference to biophysical roots (including neurophysio- logical processes). The second device is theoretical in nature and concerns the adop- tion of socially situated cognition as an overarching conceptual framework that connects brain, body and mind to social, cultural and environmental forces, as signifi- cant components of complex organizational systems. Socially situated cognition locates the brain not as the primary causal determinant of organizational behaviour but as one component, albeit a directing one, underpinning the cognitive mechanisms that enable the execution of complex work-related tasks. In combination, these two devices provide a realist, socially situated view of the microfoundations of organizational behaviour, whereby the analysis of neurophysiological processes plays a contributory, but not primary, role in advancing the science and practice of management and organization.

Contrary to the anti-reductionist view that drawing on neuroscience diminishes the importance of social context, our analysis demonstrates how it points the way toward new microfoundations for understanding behaviour in organizations, ones that posit a greater role for embodied and socially situated cognition as generative mechanisms of individual and collective action in the workplace. Below, we provide examples to illus- trate how socially situated cognition research can bring the basic insights of social neu- roscience to bear on the problems of MOS by changing theory rather than changing methods. From this standpoint, the primary benefit of social neuroscience for advancing MOS lies less in placing employees in brain scanners; indeed, arguably, such an exercise becomes unnecessary.

To progress the debate regarding neuroscience in MOS beyond unbridled advocacy versus outright rejection, we first revisit the hierarchical reductionist rationale for organi- zational neuroscience before considering recent anti-reductionist critiques of this approach. Next, we outline the benefits of critical realism as a viable alternative. Finally, we demonstrate how socially situated cognition complements critical realism − as an essential device for mediating between fundamental neuropsychological mechanisms and higher-level organizational behaviour − conceived broadly so as to encompass indi- vidual, group, organizational and inter-organizational levels.

768 Human Relations 67(7)

Limitations of hierarchical reductionism for linking neuroscience with MOS

Decomposing psychological and brain functions to the molecular level, ‘neuroscience has pursued reductionism with ruthless determination’ (Becker and Cropanzano, 2010: 937). Extending this approach, Becker et al. (2011) advocate hierarchical reductionism as the primary philosophical basis for introducing neuroscience to MOS. As a general philosophy, this approach involves explaining higher-level (i.e. more abstract) phenom- ena in terms of lower levels of analysis (Nagel, 1961). In the case of organizational neuroscience, hierarchical reductionism involves explaining behavioural phenomena such as attitudes and justice in terms of individual brain activity. Hierarchical reduction- ism thus champions the basic proposition that organizations are reducible to groups, which in turn are reducible to individuals, whereupon individuals can then be decom- posed into discrete brain processes (Becker et al., 2011).

Becker et al. (2011) claim that the value of neuroscience is that it inserts an additional level of explanation into organizational analysis, that is, the neurological level, that ena- bles researchers to drill down into the ‘primal causes of behavior’ (Becker et al., 2011: 934). This form of reductionism necessarily privileges lower levels of explanation over higher ones and in so doing posits neurophysiological processes as the fundamental driv- ers of individual, group and organizational phenomena. Hence, it legitimizes a race to the bottom in the search for ultimate causation. For example, Becker and colleagues suggest that analysing mirror neurons will ultimately uncover the fundamental, implicit causes of workplace discrimination and resistance to change. In a related vein, they claim that examining activity in specified brain centres will enable researchers to ascertain whether concern for organizational justice stems ultimately from the neural substrates of self- interest or those pertaining to moral judgment, thereby shedding light on a key question concerning human motivation.

Becker et al. (2011) suggest that the goal of hierarchical reductionism is not merely to replace concepts from one field with those from another but rather to connect or unify concepts from diverse fields located at different levels of explanation – a process known as consilience. According to Becker et al. (2011: 936), consilience is a legitimate and proper goal of science because ‘an explanation at one level of abstraction will inevitably lead to questions that are better answered at other levels’. Hence, according to this view, hierarchically integrating higher-level descriptions with lower-level explanations pro- vides richer and more robust theories. Other management scholars have used this same hierarchical reductionist logic to argue in favour of neuroeconomic analyses of organiza- tional problems (see, for example, Volk and Kohler, 2012: 523).

In the background to the reductive vision for organizational neuroscience exemplified by Becker et al.’s analysis lie fundamental differences of opinion regarding how the brain functions. One school of thought, the more traditional view, dating back to the clas- sic work of Lashley (1930), is predicated on the notion of localization of function. Based on this notion, neuroscientists seek to identify particular brain regions and neural struc- tures associated with particular behavioural functions. For example, the occipital lobes enable visual processing, whereas the primary function of the temporal lobes is to pro- cess auditory stimuli. Based on this assumption, hierarchical reductionism views the

Healey and Hodgkinson 769

central nervous system as a hierarchical system, whereby certain neuronal structures predominate invariantly over others in the planning and execution of all aspects of human behaviour.

An alternative vision, however, borne of contemporary advances in neuroimaging, has challenged the primacy of localization of function, demonstrating that in order to execute particular actions people draw upon multiple neural systems in concert. Mounting evidence informed by advances in neuroimaging, centred on functional magnetic reso- nance imaging (fMRI), indicates that at any given moment multiple structures and sys- tems of the nervous system contribute to thought and action (Lieberman, 2007). These more recent developments imply that skilled performance emerges from an orchestrated interplay of multiple regions and structures dispersed across the brain as a whole (Lieberman, 2000), analogous to the way in which leadership and coordination processes operate in organic organizations. The emergentist principle that the interaction between distributed neural components produces properties of cognition and mind that are irre- ducible to those components (see, for example, Bunge, 1977) is essential to current understanding of a wide range of cognitive phenomena, from mental representation (Barsalou, 1999; Rumelhart et al., 1986) and working memory (Postle, 2006) to con- sciousness itself (Damasio, 2010). These developments problematize hierarchical reduc- tion as the basis for organizational neuroscience.2

The legacy of (strong) hierarchical reductionist localization of function is epitomized in Mintzberg’s (1976) well-known Harvard Business Review article, ‘Planning on the left side and managing on the right’, which sought to reduce logical analysis capabilities to the brain’s left hemisphere and intuitive and emotional capabilities to its right hemi- sphere. The idea that the left or right hemispheres dominate particular cognitive tasks – the lateralization of function hypothesis that informed the Nobel Prize winning split-brain studies of Gazzaniga and Sperry – was over-extended by Mintzberg (1976), among oth- ers, to the realms of decision making, as has become clear in the wake of more recent studies using fMRI showing that intuition, insight, creativity and related processes arise from a complex interplay of cortical and subcortical neural structures that integrate somatic (i.e. bodily) and cognitive-affective signals, including messages from the viscera (Damasio, 2010; Lieberman, 2000; Satpute and Lieberman, 2006). As observed by a number of commentators (e.g. Akinci and Sadler-Smith, 2012; Dane and Pratt, 2007; Gazzaniga, 2006; Hodgkinson and Healey, 2011; Hodgkinson and Sadler-Smith, 2003), the earlier oversimplification of lateralization of function has resulted in questionable management theory and ill-conceived assessment tools.

Limitations of the anti-reductionist critique of organizational neuroscience

By aligning itself with hierarchical reductionism, organizational neuroscience locates itself in hotly contested philosophical territory. Following Feyerabend’s (1962) essay on incommensurability in the reduction of scientific theories, social theory has tended to reserve the term ‘reductionism’ for pejorative use (Sayer, 2010). In organization theory, hostility toward reductionism has long been evident in debates over agency and structure,

770 Human Relations 67(7)

in which deterministic and structuralist organization theorists oppose biological reduc- tionism, psychologism and behavioural individualism by positing social structures and processes as independent causal forces constraining organizational actors (Blau, 1974; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Donaldson, 1996). It is thus unsurprising that some scholars have begun to question the reductionist ethos of organizational neuroscience. In a notable recent anti-reductionist critique, Lindebaum and Zundel (2013) have sought to land a decisive pre-emptive strike against any attempts to use neuropsychological theory and methods to study organizational activities.

Lindebaum and Zundel (2013) contend that organizational neuroscience is bound to fail owing to established problems associated with each of three specific types of reduc- tion, namely: theoretical, constitutive and explanatory reduction. They maintain that pro- gressing organizational neuroscience via theoretical reduction – explaining a higher-level theory in terms of a lower-level one – is logically impossible because MOS theories and neuropsychological theories use qualitatively disparate terminology and logics to describe phenomena and their underlying mechanisms. They argue, for instance, that MOS and neuropsychology attach non-equivalent meanings to the concept of ‘implicit’, making it impossible to connect mirror neurons to tacit behaviour via implicit attitudes, in the way suggested by Becker et al. (2011).3

Lindebaum and Zundel maintain that constitutive reduction – assuming that higher- level social phenomena are, in essence, ontologically indistinct from lower-level phe- nomena – is equally problematic. For instance, they contend that because organizational phenomena such as leadership are inherently relational and social they are not composed of neuroanotomical structures or neurochemical processes in the same way that atoms are composed of protons, electrons and neutrons.

Finally, Lindebaum and Zundel see no value in explanatory reduction, which entails using lower-level entities to explain higher-level entities in a more metaphorical sense − for instance, using patterns or properties observed at the neurological level to describe features at the cognitive or behavioural level. Highlighting the fact that multiple brain processes underpin a given psychological state, the ‘multiple realization problem’, Lindebaum and Zundel imply that explanatory reduction is problematic because research- ers cannot be sure which neurological features correspond to a given action.

Lindebaum and Zundel’s (2013) critique provides a detailed specification of the prob- lems with the reductionist approach and provides a timely warning. However, their anal- ysis misses a larger point: classical reductionism is not the only vehicle for linking neuroscience and MOS. Lindebaum and Zundel’s analysis uses dated philosophical devices that contemporary philosophy of science has countered, not least through advances in critical realism. In this sense, denying the relevance of neuroscience for MOS by problematizing psychoneural reductionism constitutes something of a sleight of hand. The countervailing argument we develop below is that, although hierarchical reductionism is untenable, the anti-reductionist denial of neuroscience is too strong, leaving MOS scholars at a dead end and divorcing them from a potentially important source of insight into the generative mechanisms of behaviour in the workplace. To break the resulting impasse, we demonstrate next how critical realism provides a viable alter- native, non-reductionist vehicle for forging the links required to advance MOS. Critical realism’s view of human activity as embedded in a complex ecology of causal forces has

Healey and Hodgkinson 771

been described as ‘realism without reductionism’ (Carolan, 2005: 1) and sets the stage for using socially situated cognition to connect neuroscience with MOS.

A critical realist basis for linking neuroscience with MOS

The remainder of this article builds on a line of philosophical inquiry that we have been developing over a number of years to advance MOS as a critical realist science of design (Hodgkinson, 2013; Hodgkinson and Healey, 2008b; Hodgkinson and Rousseau, 2009; Hodgkinson and Starkey, 2011, 2012).4 Originating largely out of the UK in the 1970s and 1980s (Bhaskar, 1975; Harre, 1972; Keat and Urry, 1975), critical realism exists in the space between objectivism and (radical) social constructionism. In the wake of its spreading intellectual influence across the social sciences, MOS scholars are increas- ingly positing critical realism as a foundation for moving beyond the paradigm wars between positivism and post-positivist relativism (Fleetwood and Ackroyd, 2004; Miller and Tsang, 2011; Reid, 2001; Tsang and Kwan, 1999).

Bhaskar (1975, 1989, 1998, 2011) has provided the most comprehensive statement of critical realism. Its defining feature is the insistence on an independent material reality, but also a denial of direct correspondence between knowledge claims about that material reality and reality itself. To this end, Bhaskar (1975, 1978, 1979, 1989, 1998, 2008, 2011) distinguished between the intransitive objects of knowledge, which exist indepen- dently from human conception (e.g. light, mercury, neurons and so on) and the transitive objects of knowledge produced through such conception, which are facts, theories, para- digms, models and the like. Building on this distinction, Bhaskar (1975) articulates a stratified account of reality that distinguishes: (i) the ‘real’ world of causal powers, which contains deep structures and generative mechanisms that give rise to actual events; (ii) the actual, namely the flow of events produced either as natural states of affairs or under controlled conditions; and (iii) the empirical, that is, events known directly or indirectly through observation and experience. By asserting the independence of reality, actuality and the empirical, Bhaskar (1975) avoids the epistemic fallacy of conflating ontology with epistemology. More pragmatically, his separation of these three strata allows for the co-existence of competing knowledge claims and the inevitable fallibility of those claims in terms of their veracity. However, because certain claims have greater verisimilitude than others (i.e. some empirical observations are closer to the actual and real than oth- ers), science can progress only through critiques of relative explanatory value, rather than through a linear progression toward the truth − a process known as retroduction.

A notable feature of critical realism is that it sees epistemological common ground for the physical and social sciences, even while maintaining a unique ontology for the transi- tive objects of social scientific study. This epistemological compatibility is evident in Bhaskar’s (1975: 16) conversion of transcendental realism (‘a law-governed world inde- pendent of man’) in the physical sciences into critical naturalism in the social sciences. According to Bhaskar (1978: 22), critical naturalism concerns an ‘extra-conceptual real- ity … which is really generative of social life and yet unavailable to direct inspection by the senses’. Critical realism’s status as a meta-theory, positing common explanatory mechanisms across the sciences, thus provides an ideal means to bridge social neurosci- ence and MOS.

772 Human Relations 67(7)

Emergent powers materialism

For the critical realist, human behaviour has a real physical existence free of agents’ conceptions of that behaviour, even if empirical access to the real structures and mecha- nisms at work is only ever indirect. It is precisely the material nature of the human physi- cal condition that enables this independence − specifically, the fact that persons are material things comprising cells, brains and bodies (including neurophysiology) and are characterized by their biological basis. To overlook this material basis is to lose sight of the essence of human action. As Bhaskar (1978: 15) notes, social theory should take for granted that:

. . . persons are material things with a degree of neuro-physiological complexity which enables them not just, like the higher animals, to initiate changes in a purposeful way, to monitor and control their performances, but to monitor the monitoring of these performances and to be capable of a commentary upon them.

As Bhaskar points out, it is by recognizing the human ability to act upon and transform their own physical states and behaviour that we can be sure that body and mind are caus- ally related but also distinct. In the context of organizational life, it is precisely the bio- material human constitution that enables organizational actors to initiate purposeful change in their internal and external environments, reflect on their own and others’ actions, and ultimately to regulate their own performance (Bandura, 1991). A further reminder of the human physical condition is that affect (i.e. feeling) pervades the capacities for agency and self-awareness, such that agents attach meaning to the social world as feeling organ- isms (Bhaskar, 1998). These and other human powers such as speech and language are both ontogenetically rooted in organism development and phylogenetically rooted in bio- logical and cultural evolution. Given that conscious and goal directed agents are situated in pre-existing social contexts, simultaneously mobilizing and being shaped by social structures, human activity is an ‘irreducibly bio-social product’ (Bhaskar, 1998: 411).

An important corollary of human materiality is the asymmetrical ontological relation- ship between the biophysical realm and the social realm; specifically, the social cannot exist without the biophysical but the biophysical can exist without the social (Bhaskar, 1998; Carolan, 2005). This asymmetry leads naturally to questions concerning the direc- tion of causality between the biophysical and the social. However, the critical realist stance on this matter contrasts sharply with the reductionist position exemplified in organizational neuroscience. As observed earlier, Becker et al.’s (2011) hierarchical reductionism equates mental states with brain states and thus assumes strictly bottom-up causality. This reductionist approach thus aligns with central state materialism − the position that mental states are equivalent to physical states and those physical states are fully determined by underlying natural laws (Green, 1981).

Bhaskar (1998) outlines emergent powers materialism as the alternative to central state materialism (see also Kim, 1999; Rueger, 2000). Emergent powers materialism is characterized by rootedness and emergence. Rootedness is the tenet that higher-level features grow from origins that are more basic; in the case of human systems, these ori- gins are biophysical roots. Emergence is the principle that higher-level phenomena such

Healey and Hodgkinson 773

as mind emerge from, but are irreducible to, matter. Mind is said to be an emergent power of matter (Bhaskar, 1998); the social emerges from, but does not depend fully on, the material.

Two features of rootedness and emergence hold implications for the neuroscientific analysis of organizational behaviour. First, the processes of emergence – specifically com- plex interactions between multiple components, potentially operating at different levels – ensure that higher-level phenomena ultimately possess properties that are independent of, and cannot be predicted or even explained by, their lower-level roots (Kim, 1992; Wimsatt, 2000). As Kim (1992) notes, we may know all about the neurobiological and physiochemi- cal processes of a given psychological process, yet have no idea what sensory qualities emerge from it, unless we have already observed that certain sensations emerge from an identical set of conditions. Nonetheless, those physical roots play a key contributory role.

Second, once higher-level phenomena emerge in distinct forms, they exert a recursive influence upon the operation of the lower-level mechanisms that gave rise to them, act- ing as constraints. In this way, higher-order psychological states emerge out of biological and neurophysiological processes − states that in turn recursively shape subsequent neu- rophysiological activities. By way of illustration, goals, needs and perceptions are men- tal events that emerge from activity in particular brain regions but, once developed, those higher-level mental events subsequently shape how the brain behaves. For instance, although social agents use mirror neurons to monitor one another’s behaviour (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004), it is perceptions (i.e. attitudes, stereotypes) and acts of interper- sonal communication (e.g. prompting from those being monitored) that determine when such monitoring takes place, continues and stops (cf. Becker et al., 2011).

Dual control of organizational action. Emergence builds on Polanyi’s (1968) likening of human biological systems to manmade machines, which highlights that both are under the dual control of higher-level structures and lower-level laws of nature. In human bio- logical systems, higher-level structures (e.g. organs serving particular purposes) serve as boundary conditions that harness the biophysical and biochemical processes that enable specific functions. Similarly, a machine’s higher-level design principles harness the lower-level (i.e. electrophysical) processes on which it relies for functioning. In both cases, it is impossible to explain the workings of the system in terms of its lower-level features alone, because higher-level structures control how those lower features are organized and thus control how the system as a whole functions. Hence, under dual con- trol, higher-level features serve as boundary conditions for lower-level mechanisms, the former shaping the manifestation and deployment of the latter. Bhaskar (2008) extends the logic of dual control to human social systems. For instance, conversation, itself aris- ing from language, constrains in turn the use and development of speech. Analogously, in economic systems, technologies give rise to new markets that subsequently shape how those technologies are used, whereupon the use of technology determines the conditions under which certain physical laws operate. Given dual control, the workings of complex systems are irreducible to lower-level laws.

Although complex systems are not fully determined by lower-level laws, they are nev- ertheless bound by them. As Polanyi (1968) noted, because higher-level features harness (i.e. make use of) lower-level processes, those processes still set the boundary conditions

774 Human Relations 67(7)

for higher-level features. For instance, a machine cannot operate beyond the boundary conditions of the laws of physics and chemistry. Analogously, Polanyi (1968: 1312) argued that: ‘the mind harnesses neurophysiological mechanisms and is not determined by them … we can see then that, though rooted in the body, the mind is free in its actions’.

Predicated on this dual-control logic, MOS scholars should not ask questions con- cerning which neuropsychological processes cause or determine particular behavioural phenomena. Rather, they should ask which neuropsychological features higher-level individual and socio-organizational processes draw upon or harness in the execution of particular significant organizational activities. There is a subtle but important difference between these two approaches. The difference is between assuming that the higher-level functions of cognitive systems in social organizations make use of lower-level (i.e. neu- rological) processes and assuming that those processes determine the behaviour of the wider systems in question.

Emotional roots of decision. To illustrate the emergence of organizational activity within neurophysiological boundaries, consider the case of how affect (i.e. feelings and emo- tions) bounds organizational decision making. Individuals and groups draw on affect to make organizational decisions; decision makers use feelings and emotions to variously guide attention to the external environment, change or reinforce mental representations, and impel action toward alternative courses of action (Hodgkinson and Healey, 2011). Affect sets the boundary conditions for organizational decisions because: (i) it seems unlikely that important organizational decisions can occur without invoking human feel- ings; and (ii) specific emotions shape the social processes of decision making (Andrade and Ariely, 2009; Barsade and Gibson, 2007; Janis and Mann, 1977; Seo and Barrett, 2007; Wong et al., 2006). This is not to say that either decisions or emotions themselves can be reduced wholly to neurochemical processes. Rather, from a critical realist stand- point, emotions and decisions both emerge from interactions among neural, somatic, cognitive, linguistic and social forces – but their basic nature is partly rooted in the human physiological condition (Harre, 2009; March and Simon, 1993).

The example of affect in organizational decision processes is noteworthy because it illustrates the real value of neuroscience for understanding managerial and organiza- tional phenomena in general. That is, without appreciation of the embodied nature of human cognition, we run the risk of perpetuating models of organizational activity that run contrary to contemporary understanding of human nature. Computational models of human thinking and action based purely on ‘cold’ cognition still predominate in manage- ment and organization theory (Hodgkinson and Healey, 2008a). Continuing to build MOS theory on computational models that are themselves based on the experimental psychology of the mid-20th century is problematic because contemporary psychological science suggests that many aspects of behaviour once thought as the preserve of cold cognition in fact rely heavily on affective mechanisms. The turn to embrace hot cogni- tion – informed by neuroscientific studies of the mechanisms recruited by behavioural phenomena such as attention, decision and sensemaking – necessitates a change in MOS theories that make assumptions concerning human cognition (Hodgkinson and Healey, 2011). If behavioural plausibility is a desirable criterion for management and organiza- tion theory (Gavetti et al., 2007), then social neuroscience has an important role to play in defining what is behaviourally plausible.

Healey and Hodgkinson 775

Ecological embeddedness: Organizational neuroscience and socially situated cognition

Although, as demonstrated above, emergence obviates the need for hierarchical reduc- tionism, it is still vital to choose carefully the conceptual apparatus used to incorporate the neurobiological roots of managerial and organizational activities. According to Lindebaum and Zundel (2013: 862), one solution to the alleged ‘lack of “fit” between the terminologies and logics of organizational and neuroscientific theories’ is to construct ‘bridge laws’ (Nagel, 1961) − that is, laws that provide logical connections between concepts established in the two fields in question. In the present context, this approach involves creating bridge laws (B) that connect organizational concepts (O) to neurosci- entific concepts (N) in a hierarchically linear sequence (i.e. N→B→O). Viewed thus, bridge laws are mediating devices designed to translate. They build relations between concepts while preserving the idiosyncratic meanings attached to those concepts in their originating fields. However, as Lindebaum and Zundel illustrate, creating such bridge laws will be practically messy and logically difficult.

An alternative approach is to adopt an overarching theoretical framework that will in the longer term allow for closer integration of concepts describing higher-level (i.e. man- agement and organization) phenomena with those describing lower-level (i.e. neuropsy- chological) mechanisms. This approach is akin to arguments developed by Hooker (1981a, 1981b) and Kim (1998). Both writers point out that in many cases inter-theoretic syntheses proceed not by deriving a target theory from a source theory but by using the source theory to produce a ‘corrected analogue’ of the target theory − a process that imbues the corrected analogue with greater explanatory power.

Unlike inter-theoretic reduction, however, where the concepts and rules of a lower- level source theory (i.e. neuroscientific theory) re-formulate the target theory (i.e. organ- ization theory), we suggest that the influence should flow both ways. Our approach is to ask, in the spirit of critical realism, two questions: (i) what must neural mechanisms be like for characteristic organizational activity to be possible; and (ii) what must organiza- tional activity be like for neural mechanisms to be possible? Answering these questions promises to yield not only changes to our target theories of organizational behaviour, but also changes to the way we view source theories of neural functioning (cf. Senior et al., 2011). Specifically, we submit that socially situated cognition can be used as a frame- work to model corrected analogues of both neurological mechanisms (N1) and organiza- tional processes (O1) as components of organizational cognitive systems (C), that is, {N1, O1} ∈ C.

As described by Smith and Semin (2004), four principles characterize socially situ- ated cognition (SSC):5

1. Cognition is for adaptive action: it serves to produce future actions and is not an abstract enterprise designed for its own ends. Hence, the primary purpose of cog- nitive entities such as attitudes is to guide future actions.

2. Cognition is socially situated: it emerges from the dynamic interaction between agents, tasks and environments. This view stands in contrast to the mentalistic assumption that cognition is ‘in the head’ and can be studied irrespective

776 Human Relations 67(7)

of context. By way of illustration, rather than providing mere background, the physical environment provides resources integral to human cognition, evident in the way we off-load mental tasks to external tools (Hutchins, 1995) and rely on object affordances to guide action (Norman, 1988).

3. Cognition is embodied: body and mind are tightly linked (Clark, 1997; Niedenthal, 2007; Wilson, 2002). In particular, symbolic cognition is not divorced from per- ception but is grounded in multiple sensory modalities (Barsalou, 1999, 2008), drawing on the systems responsible for perception (e.g. vision, audition), bodily movement (i.e. sensorimotor functions) and introspection (i.e. feelings and mental states).

4. Cognition is distributed: it emerges across brains and the environment, through the use of artifacts and tools, and across social agents, via communication and other social activities.

The principles of SSC hold, above all else, that cognition is embedded in an extended system that unites brain, body and mind with the social and material environment. In a distributed cognitive system, ‘adaptive cognition involves perceptual–motor loops that pass through the environment’ (Smith and Semin, 2007: 134), rather than being some- thing that is implemented solely by intra-individual processes.

To illustrate, consider again the case of mirror neurons. It seems that understanding social stimuli depends on our ability to simulate actions and feelings in our own bodies. Studies show that when an agent observes another engaging in a goal-directed action (e.g. grasping an object) their motor cortex is activated, even when this activation does not translate into action on their own part (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2004). Similar effects occur when understanding emotions: to understand others’ pain we simulate our own pain, via activation of a neural network corresponding to that feeling (Decety and Grezes, 2006). Crucially, inhibiting the motor movements involved in the bodily expres- sion of emotion interferes with agents’ ability to both experience emotion personally and to comprehend emotion experienced by significant others (Niedenthal, 2007). Hence, empathizing with others depends on bodily capabilities as well as brain processes. It is in this sense that the cognitive mechanisms for action pass through the environment, in this case the bodily environment, as well as the brain. Contrary to the hierarchical reduction- ist approach to organizational neuroscience, the ability to relate to others cannot be ana- lysed validly by confining attention to the activation of specific brain regions.

Brain, mind and body in adaptive organizational systems. If neuropsychological pro- cesses are not the ultimate determinants of organizational behaviour, then what role might they play? The answer from a SSC perspective is that the brain is but one mecha- nism, albeit a directing one, responsible for the functioning of embedded cognitive sys- tems. As Clark (2008: 122) observes, although brain activity is never sufficient for the existence of a given cognitive state, that activity is still part of the machinery that imple- ments the state in question:

It is indeed the biological brain (or perhaps some of its subsystems) that is in the driver’s seat. That is to say, it is indeed some neurally based process of recruitment that … turns out to be so pointedly unbiased regarding the use of inner versus outer circuits, storage, and operations. But

Healey and Hodgkinson 777

once such an organization is in place, it is the flow and transformation of information in (what is often) an extended, distributed system that provides the machinery of ongoing thought and reason.

Adopting the neurocentric view that all cognition occurs in the brain’s structures and processes, we lose sight not only of the system’s other contributing components (e.g. bodily, artifactual, social) but also of how those components combine in the execution of skilled tasks. But straying too far in the opposite direction, ignoring the role of neuropsy- chological mechanisms in organizations omits a crucial part of their machinery.

From a SSC perspective, Clark (1997: 130) suggests that human cognitive systems possess emergent properties at two main levels. First, internally emergent features result from the interaction of multiple inner sources of variation; for example, specialized but also distributed brain regions produce higher-level cognitive functions that are more than the sum of their components. For instance, the reflexive (i.e. implicit and automatic) cognitive processes described by Lieberman (2007) emerge from interactions among various subcortical and cortical neural regions.

Second, behaviourally emergent features result from interactions between the whole organism and the environment and are inexplicable without reference to systems level fac- tors that shape collective properties. Hence, the failure to understand internal and behav- ioural emergence provides an incomplete specification of complex human systems.

Viewing organizational behaviour as a reflection of systems within systems provides significant explanatory power. In this view, the brain is one system whose properties emerge from interactions among complex components, including various neural struc- tures and processes, bodily feedback and environmental stimulus inputs. Likewise, the wider organizational cognitive system emerges from interactions among various internal (including the brain system) and external (artifacts, social situations, environmental fea- tures) components. By way of illustration, group information processing systems (Hinsz et al., 1997) arise from interactions among individuals comprising their own cognitive systems. In turn, those interactions depend on social identities that are inherently rela- tional. Moreover, local environmental conditions (e.g. cultural norms, power structures) constrain interpersonal interaction. To no small extent, the system that warrants closest attention depends on the level of analysis closest to the behaviour to be explained (Hackman, 2003). However, in adopting such a focus, we should not lose sight of the embeddedness of a given system in relation to the more micro and macro systems sur- rounding it.

Revisiting the entrepreneurial brain. It is instructive to contrast more explicitly the SSC view of the brain’s role in organizational life with the reductive alternative adopted by organizational neuroscience’s advocates. Entrepreneurship provides an interesting case. One way to use neuroscience in this context is to examine the extent to which, and in what ways, entrepreneurs’ brains differ from those of managers and/or other groups of organi- zational actors, for example, in terms of their sensitivity to risk (Becker et al., 2011; Nicolaou et al., 2008a, 2008b; Senior et al., 2011). The assumption underpinning this approach is that entrepreneurs possess distinctive neuroanatomical features – concerning the dopaminergic regions of the brain’s reward centres – that hardwires them for the kind of ‘functional impulsivity’ (Lawrence et al., 2008) required for risk-seeking behaviour

778 Human Relations 67(7)

when facing high-stakes (i.e. affect-laden) investment prospects. The natural conclusions from adopting this approach are that effective entrepreneurs can be identified based on the risk-proneness of their brains (Becker et al., 2011) and that stimulating the appropri- ate neurochemistry (e.g. with drugs) can enhance entrepreneurial behaviour (Lawrence et al., 2008). The overriding assumption of this, the neurocentric view, is that entrepre- neurial capability resides in the brain.

From a SSC perspective, entrepreneurial capability is much broader, emerging from a cognitive system that draws on brain, body and environment, and extends to the activi- ties of multiple actors. One recent line of inquiry consonant with this constructive alter- native emphasizes that entrepreneurs rely on communication to legitimate themselves and their ventures and that hand and bodily gestures are integral to this legitimation process (Clarke and Cornelissen, 2011; Cornelissen and Clarke, 2010). This research suggests that gestures do not simply express underlying thoughts; they also convey infor- mation not contained in speech. For instance, gestures communicate perceptual-motor information about objects and activities (e.g. simulating a motion path to illustrate a business moving forward), thereby allowing agents to ground abstract concepts in physi- cal experience, thus improving listeners’ understanding (Cook and Tanenhaus, 2009). In addition, gestures play an active role in cognition. Studies show that agents offload tasks by gesturing in order to lighten cognitive demands. For instance, gesturing while learn- ing new ideas helps people retain knowledge, whereas impeding the ability to gesture reduces that ability (Goldin-Meadow, 1999; Goldin-Meadow et al., 2001). Related stud- ies show that gesturing also shapes the representation of tasks. For instance, when people use particular gestures to explain a given problem, those gestures influence the way they approach that problem subsequently, suggesting that the way they mentally represent the task depends on the gestures used (Beilock and Goldin-Meadow, 2010). Evidence sug- gests that similar mechanisms are at play when entrepreneurs use gesture to gain support from investors (Cornelissen et al., 2012).

We are not simply pointing out here that entrepreneurship is a social process rather than a neuropsychological one. Instead, we are arguing that neuropsychological pro- cesses are a constitutive mechanism of social processes in general. As Clark (2008: 125) observes, gestures and actions are not the mere expressions of fully formed neural pro- cesses; rather, they are ‘part and parcel of a coupled neural-bodily unfolding that is itself usefully seen as an organismically extended process of thought’. This perspective requires a more recursive understanding of the relationship between brain, body and action in organizations. Our overriding message is that attempts to study managerial and organizational phenomena neuroscientifically should be contextualized appropriately, based on the principle that neural activity, mind, body and social processes form an inte- grated system. Conceived thus, it makes little sense to isolate the virtues of individual neuroanatomical components. However, understanding how neural systems mediate the exchange of information passing through bodily and social loops might well prove illu- minating for MOS research.

Downward causation in the neuroscientific analysis of organizations

As we have seen, analysing the neurological mechanisms of management and organiza- tion requires a model of causation that avoids the trap of positing neural mechanisms as

Healey and Hodgkinson 779

primal causes but which also moves beyond the strong anti-reductionist thesis that lower- level (i.e. brain) processes bear little relation to social phenomena. Critical realism and SSC provide such a model, assuming that causation is multidirectional and generative rather than unidirectional and invariant.

In marked contrast with naive empiricist positivism, which assumes that what is observed is what is important, critical realism focuses on the unobservable generative mechanisms (social, cultural and biological) necessary for a particular turn of events to occur, which are themselves a complex outcome of structure and agency (Bhaskar, 1975). Events occur when actors mobilize the resources at their disposal in a given context to shape change. According to Bhaskar (1975: 3), the generative mechanisms of events are ‘the ways of acting of things’ that occur in the domain of the real. For human activity, generative mechanisms concern material elements but also extend to social structures and forms, ‘an ensemble of structures, practices and conventions’ (Bhaskar, 1978: 12), which individuals and groups reproduce and transform via their motivated actions. Given that human actions can change social systems but are recursively shaped by them, all social systems are necessarily open systems, in which ‘invariant empirical regularities do not obtain’ (Bhaskar, 1978: 18). Moreover, given the hidden complexities pertaining to the generative mechanisms at play, as argued by Bhaskar (1975), the social sciences can only operate by ‘retroduction’, the theoretical reconstruction of plausible explanations of the conditions and mechanisms necessary for the events at hand to have occurred.

Given that the social structures and processes that agents co-create constrain their actions, the influence of causal forces cannot be unidirectional, that is, flowing only from the individual to the social. For this reason, models of social activity must account for downward causation as well as upward causation. Whereas upward causation concerns the bottom-up influence of lower-level entities on higher-level ones – for example, posit- ing neuronal processes as causes of organizational behaviour – downward causation emphasizes constraints in the opposite direction.

Campbell (1990: 180) illustrates downward causation through natural selection in bio- logical evolution, where ‘the laws of the higher-level selective system determine in part the distribution of lower-level events and substances’. Similarly in social systems, once aggregate processes emerge from lower-level mechanisms they become causal forces with the same legitimacy and power as lower-level factors (Bickhard and Campbell, 2000). Several recent studies have demonstrated the top-down influence of social struc- tures on the operation of neurological circuits. For instance, Spitzer and colleagues (2007) found that situations where the violation of social norms can lead to punishment influ- enced distinctive neural networks, leading to increased norm compliance.

The emergence of such higher-level processes and structures ensures that ‘the system as a whole gains a broader causal repertoire’ (Murphy and Brown, 2007: 89). Viewed from this perspective, although neuroanatomical structures and processes may be homog- enous across individuals (Becker et al., 2011), heterogeneity in organizational structures and processes creates considerable variation in behaviour, because such structures and processes exert distinct influences on neural systems.

How organizations influence the brain. The legitimacy of higher-level causal emergents in complex organizational systems suggests an alternative research agenda to that envis- aged by bottom-up (i.e. hierarchically reductive) accounts of organizational neuroscience.

780 Human Relations 67(7)

Rather than focusing on how the brain causes behaviour in organizations, it may be equally valid and valuable to ask how work organizations influence the brain. By way of illustration, one potential line of inquiry is to examine the role of organizational routines and systems in variously suppressing and harnessing the lower-level neural motivational systems concerning self-interest and impulsiveness. As Postrel and Rumelt (1992) note, an often-overlooked purpose of organizational routines and structures (such as hierarchy, supervisory arrangements, rules and policies) is to provide external controls on the human impulses that prevent agents from acting in their own (and often the firm’s) long-term interests (see also Hodgkinson and Healey, 2011; Teece, 2007). Such impulses include procrastination, reacting angrily, seeking immediate gratification, withdrawal and absen- teeism. Postrel and Rumelt (1992) argue that a model of ‘impulsive man’ is required to explain the range of routines and practices that emerge within and across organizations − a model that diverges from standard economic man (homo economicus).

Although neuroscientists have already begun to identify the neural substrates of impulsiveness using economic games (McClure et al., 2004), if organizational neurosci- ence is to provide a richer and more useful understanding of impulse control, it must surely move beyond scanning for activation in the neural substrates of self-interest dur- ing contrived tasks. Indeed, understanding impulse control and emotion regulation in organizations requires a broader, more socially situated approach. In order to explain why some organizations are more effective than others in regulating and harnessing impulses, we need to understand how the neurological processes of self-interest and impulsiveness mediate between organizations’ distinctive social, artifactual and cultural features and the expression of impulsive behaviour. In this view, the machinery of moti- vated action and emotion regulation involves the transmission of information from exter- nal artifacts (e.g. norms, routines, social cues) to intrapersonal neural systems and executive cognitive control systems, and onward to the restrained or indulgent actions of agents. Viewed thus, the architecture of work organizations is configured so that impulse control and emotion regulation are off-loaded to extra-personal processes and structures (e.g. norms, routines, hierarchies). Hence, agents actively create the external structures that constrain their ongoing processes of thinking and feeling (James, 1989; Morris and Feldman, 1996).

Corporate corruption scandals such as the recent, highly publicized cases of Enron and Lehman Brothers provide an interesting basis for illustrating the foregoing principles in action. One way to explain complex cases such as these is to assume that something specific to the underlying neurology of the key individuals involved was instrumental to the deceit and other dysfunctions displayed by them. Supporting this thesis, various stud- ies point to abnormalities in cortical and subcortical brain structures among psychopathic individuals (Muller et al., 2003). With this evidence in mind, it takes only a small leap to explain corporate dysfunction and psychopathy by reference to stable neurobiological differences (Babiak and Hare, 2006). Indeed, identifying exceptional neuroanatomical functioning might ultimately help to shed light on why rare individuals and groups are able to act constructively to break through and redefine those pathological organizational cultures and practices that bind in dysfunctional ways the behaviours of many others.

However, in general this neurocentric approach ignores the role that higher-level boundary constraints – specifically organizational culture, group norms, corporate rules,

Healey and Hodgkinson 781

and routines – play variously as triggers, facilitators, suppressors and regulators of moral cognition (cf. Hannah et al., 2011; Sadler-Smith, 2012; Wang and Murnighan, 2011). From a SSC perspective, higher-level artifacts and processes influence the social signals that the neural system uses, in concert with bodily and other resources, to convert them into motivational states and ultimately actions. This top-down perspective leads natu- rally to questions of a rather different nature, not least questions concerning the extent to which and in what ways certain types of social norms and routines are more or less effec- tive in regulating destructive impulses, and what processes and practices might help to foster moral judgments and emotions of the sort that might benefit the long-term inter- ests of collectives.

Rather than merely focusing on how the brain’s emotion centres drive impulsive behaviour in organizations, thereby downplaying the role of higher-level (i.e. extra-per- sonal) causal forces, a socially situated perspective suggests that organizational neuro- scientists would benefit from focusing on how organizations influence the neural substrates of motivation and emotion that are generative mechanisms of impulsiveness. This view contrasts sharply with Powell and Puccinelli’s (2012) recent claim that neuro- imaging technology may prove ultimately more effective than organizational structures and processes (including incentives and routines) as a means of controlling basic human impulses (see also Powell, 2011). Equipped with insights from SSC, this debate concern- ing how best to gain control of workplace emotions in the service of the greater good becomes an empirical question to be addressed by competitive theory testing. Are exter- nal controls (e.g. norms, routines, structures) more or less efficacious than internal con- trols (e.g. brain technologies, self-regulation strategies) for controlling impulses such as self-opportunism, instant gratification and deceit? The fact that agents commonly off- load impulse control to external structures and routines could either be a reflection of the functional efficacy of this design feature or a reflection of its architectural simplicity.

Liberatory potential of organizational neuroscience. An understandable concern over the rise of organizational neuroscience is that powerful stakeholders, not least senior manag- ers, might seek to use so-called ‘brain technologies’ for the neurological modification of employees (Lindebaum, 2013). Research on topics such as innovation and decision making that advocates or practices the use of interventions such as neuropharmacology (Lawrence et al., 2008) or transcranial magnetic stimulation (Knoch et al., 2006) seem- ingly make this prospect more real. Behind such interventions lies a bottom-up causal logic that legitimizes the enhancement of neurological processes posited as the drivers of employee performance.

Despite these concerns, there are other means by which stakeholders might use neu- roscience for the benefit of employees, based on a top-down causal logic. For instance, neuroscientific methods might be used to assess and monitor the effects of organizations on neurological health. We have known for some time that environmental stressors affect brain and body via the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal axis (Johnson et al., 1992) and that job stress elevates blood pressure and serum cortisol levels (Fox et al., 1993). Neuroimaging techniques promise to take this important line of work further. In one recent illustrative study, researchers used positron emission tomography to scan the brains of Japanese clerks, who had experienced chronic job stress versus low job stress,

782 Human Relations 67(7)

while they performed a non-work-related unlearning task (Ohira et al., 2011). They found that the brains of chronically stressed clerks were less active in the regions associ- ated with goal-directed action, suggesting that chronic job stress can reduce neurological responsiveness outside the workplace.

In time, neuroscience might help researchers examine whether other organizational stressors such as psychological contract breach (Robinson and Morrison, 2000) exert lasting damage on the human central nervous system, leading not only to performance decrements but also to health problems within and beyond the workplace (cf. Zhao et al., 2007). Such findings would be instructive for health regulators − among other stakehold- ers − seeking to ameliorate such deleterious effects (cf. Black, 2008). From a more posi- tive angle, researchers might usefully examine how job enrichment programs affect the human nervous system (cf. Hackman and Oldham, 1976). Again, neurological data could provide compelling evidence that might help ultimately to re-humanize the workplace.

Implications for future research

Bringing together critical realism and socially situated cognition, we have begun to out- line a philosophical and theoretical approach that MOS researchers can use to build on the insights of social neuroscience. Our analysis demonstrates that replacing the central state materialism of organizational neuroscience with emergent powers materialism (Bhaskar, 1998) affords an upwardly constraining role for neuropsychological roots, while avoiding over-privileging the causal power of the brain in human activity.

Our analysis of emergence under the dual control of lower (e.g. neuropsychological) and higher (e.g. conscious agent, group and organizational) boundary conditions renders untenable the idea that research should prioritize neural processes as the primary determi- nants of organizational behaviour (cf. Becker and Cropanzano, 2010; Becker et al., 2011; Lee et al., 2012; Senior et al., 2011; Volk and Kohler, 2012). Equally untenable, however, is Lindebaum and Zundel’s (2013) conclusion that because socially complex organiza- tional phenomena cannot be reduced to the neuroscientific level it is impossible, logically, to connect neuroscience with MOS. Although neurological processes do not fully deter- mine organizational behaviour, these processes – in concert with bodily and other extra- cranial capacities – set important lower-level boundary conditions that impose strong constraints upon what is and is not possible. We have seen, for instance, that decision making requires neurobiological emotion, and economic cooperation is rooted in impor- tant neural mechanisms that convert social signals into action. Hence, explaining organi- zational behaviour by ignoring neurophysiological materiality is to divorce organizations from the lower-level boundary conditions that shape their actuality.

Like others (e.g. Cropanzano and Becker, 2013; Lindebaum and Zundel, 2013), we see dangers inherent in organizational neuroscience. However, our analysis draws atten- tion to dangers of a different kind. Our primary concern is that organizational neurosci- ence might lead us further down the path of assuming that the effective performance of work tasks depends primarily on neural capacities located inside individuals. Adopting the SSC framework we have outlined can help MOS scholars avoid this mistake. As we have seen, SSC posits that performing complex work tasks such as planning or decid- ing relies on representations distributed across individuals and externalized in artifacts

Healey and Hodgkinson 783

outside the brain. Such off-loading removes the burden of representation and computa- tion from individuals, placing it instead on the system as a whole, which has far greater cognitive capacity. Socially situated cognition thus reminds us that organizational cogni- tive capabilities are not merely the sum of individual neural processes.

Our framework for utilizing the insights of social neuroscience in MOS research requires a research programme examining organizations and organizational behaviour as a reflection of embodied but also socially situated cognition. Such a programme would seem to require a commitment to certain basic principles; below, we outline three such principles and sketch examples of the types of studies that they might inspire.

First and foremost is the commitment to recognizing brain, body and social structure as interlocked components of open organizational systems. This commitment moves us away from viewing the individual brain as an isolated entity or closed system. Viewing the brain not as chief cause but as a central regulatory organ (Cacioppo et al., 2012) can help us understand at a deeper level the nature and functions of the organizational sys- tems that individuals build to support their economic activity. For instance, the emotional and bio-regulatory processes of decision making (Bechara et al., 2000) seem to require systems, cultures and routines that provide specific types of support for organizational decisions. Future research might examine how organizations evolve different social and technological structures that support or impede the specific needs of the emotional brain in decision making (Hodgkinson and Healey, 2011). The development of low cost, mini- mally invasive and portable brain scanning equipment capable of monitoring emotional and self-regulatory responses brings such usage within reach (e.g. Debener et al., 2012).

A second principle for a SSC agenda is to focus on how neural, bodily, technological and social mechanisms interact at various levels to constitute emergent organizational behaviours. Initial research on situated cognition in organizations hints at the possibili- ties of using neuroscience for this purpose. Elsbach et al. (2005) argued that features of the organizational context, such as the cultural, artifactual, physical and socio-dynamic, shape emergent cognitive phenomena such as cognitive frames and collective mindsets. Neuroscience can enrich this mode of analysis by examining, for instance, the types of organizational norms, routines and group dynamics required for harnessing the emo- tional and cognitive processes that influence moral conduct in organizations. In this con- nection, the cortical and subcortical neurological mechanisms underlying those processes (see Moll et al., 2005) become legitimate interests, not as primal causes but as mediators between situational features of the organization and moral cognition and behaviour that provide important clues regarding the effectiveness of different situational features as facilitators of moral behaviour.

A third principle involves maintaining the commitment to the social and distributed nature of cognition. Initial forays into organizational neuroscience focus on one brain at a time. Recent technological developments (e.g. Spiegelhalder et al., 2014) suggest that it will soon be possible for researchers to scan the brains of multiple actors engaged in a wide variety of social activities, including those of the workplace. Such methods will open the doors for researchers to examine the inter-individual synchronization of neuro- logical, cognitive and affective functioning. Such methods could prove valuable for examining the neurological mediators of interpersonal phenomena in organizations,

784 Human Relations 67(7)

from consensus formation and the nature of conflict to the development of shared cogni- tion and emotional contagion.

Although reductive organizational neuroscience favours the ‘direct’ measurement of brain processes as antecedents of organizational behaviour, it should be clear from the examples we have provided throughout that neuroimaging and other direct neuroscien- tific measures are not always necessary to capitalize on insights regarding the function- ing of the human brain. Rather, it seems possible and desirable to adopt the methods of translational research (Sharp et al., 2012), using mixed, multi-level methods to transfer insights from base sciences to new applications in a manner that fits the needs of the domain of application.

Loewenstein and his colleagues (Loewenstein, 2006; Loewenstein et al., 2008) have illustrated the possibilities of translational research for using neuroscience in social sci- ence. Their research on the pain and pleasure of information in economic decisions draws directly on neuroimaging studies showing that information signalling negative prospects activates regions of the brain’s pain matrix. Because people derive pain (and pleasure) from information directly, not only from the material benefits it confers, they avoid painful information even when this might confer long-term benefit, and satiate on pleasurable information that provides marginal functional gains. From this foundation, Karlsson et al. (2009) analysed computerized records to show that investor behaviour manifested the same ‘ostrich effect’ – investors check their stocks more when the general stock market is up rather than down to avoid the pain of negative information. Analogously, MOS researchers could examine, using field experiments, surveys and/or indirect secondary data, the extent to which managers making strategic decisions exhibit selective attention to internal and external events based on the pleasure and pain of the information pertaining to those events. Translational research seems well suited for using basic neuroscientific insights to enrich MOS, while exploiting social scientific research methods that are more familiar to organizational researchers, including laboratory and field experiments, observational methods and computer simulation. Advances in our understanding of the neural mechanisms harnessed by organizational actors will surely change what we look for when using conventional research methods.

Concluding remarks

If neuroscientists and organizational researchers are to engage in collaborative research of the kind envisaged by Senior et al. (2011), as cross-functional teams working for the benefit of both disciplines, we suggest that adopting a more socially situated perspective on cognition in organizations will be vital, particularly for the advancement of MOS. Offering a critical realist alternative, we have demonstrated that grounding neuroscien- tific analyses of organizational behaviour in emergent powers materialism affords a sig- nificant role to neurobiological factors, not as prime determinants but rather as biophysical roots on which purposive human activity draws in tandem with other social, environmen- tal and technological resources.

Overcoming the reductionist objections to organizational neuroscience demands onto- logical give and take by MOS scholars located on both sides of what is clearly one of the field’s main inter-disciplinary fault lines. As we have seen, advocates of organizational

Healey and Hodgkinson 785

neuroscience, stemming primarily, although by no means exclusively, from a psychologi- cal background, need to engage more deeply with ongoing debates pertaining to the notion of emergence, to reaffirm the central importance of social and organizational levels of analysis in their work. Equally, however, although there are many instances where higher- level processes do indeed drive much of individual and collective behaviour, not all human behaviour is irreducible in the manner thus portrayed by the field’s main detractors. The latter camp also must surely recognize that a host of individual-level mechanisms need to be incorporated if MOS is to move beyond the present impasse and thus advance accounts of human behaviour that reflect more fully the rich complexities of organizational life.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

1 Authorship is alphabetical, reflecting joint and equal contribution. 2 Note, however, that even the early pioneers of localization of function research acknowl-

edged that the neural structures implicated in particular activities operate interdependently. For example, in his 1929 Presidential Address to the American Psychological Association, Lashley (1930: 24) observed,

I need scarcely point out the difficulties encountered by the older doctrine of cerebral localization. It expresses the fact that destruction of definite areas results in definite symptoms and the probable inference that these different parts have diverse functions, but it has given us no insight into the manner in which the areas or centers exercise their functions or the way in which they influence one another.

3 The supposed lack of ‘fit’ between the terminologies and logics of organizational and neu- roscientific theories is not as great as Lindebaum and Zundel (2013) imply. For instance, several leadership theorists imbue the concept of ‘implicit’ with a meaning corresponding to the meaning invoked by social cognitive neuroscientists, as do most theorists of cognition in organizations more generally (see, for example, Hodgkinson and Healey, 2008a). By way of illustration, one influential neuroscientific study defined implicit attitudes as ‘automatic eval- uation [that] by definition occurs without intention’ (Cunningham et al., 2004: 1718). Using an equivalent conception, Leavitt et al. (2011: 673) recently studied how implicit attitudes – ‘cognitive processes that often occur outside of awareness’ – towards supervisors influ- enced followers’ behaviour. Indeed, research on leader cognition has long discussed implicit phenomena in terms similar to those used by social cognitive neuroscientists, epitomized by work on implicit leadership theories (Epitropaki and Martin, 2005; Lord and Maher, 1991) and implicit schemas (Lord and Emrich, 2000).

4 Following Herbert Simon’s (1969) classic treatise, The Sciences of the Artificial, we have found it helpful to liken MOS to engineering in the physical sciences and medicine in the biological sciences (see also Denyer et al., 2008; Pandza and Thorpe, 2010; Tranfield and Starkey, 1998). As argued some 16 years ago by Tranfield and Starkey (1998), the normative implication of this analogy is that the overarching concern of MOS scholarship should be the general (engineering) problem of design — how to create organizations and systems of management that are a better fit for purpose than those we have currently. Doing so demands that the field should aspire to be transdisciplinary and problem-led. Recently, Hodgkinson

786 Human Relations 67(7)

and Starkey (2011, 2012) have argued the case for expanding the horizons of this design sci- ence ethos, by adopting a critical realist philosophy (Bhaskar, 1978, 1979), to move it beyond Simon’s (1969) positivistic conception (see also Hodgkinson, 2013; Hodgkinson and Healey, 2008b; Hodgkinson and Rousseau, 2009).

5 There are various theories of situated cognition, and the general approach embraces work on situated action (Glenberg, 1997), grounded cognition (Barsalou, 2008) and embodied cogni- tion (Wilson, 2002). We use the term ‘socially situated cognition’ as an umbrella term to encapsulate principles of situatedness, grounding and embodiment.

References

Akinci C and Sadler-Smith E (2012) Intuition in management research: A historical review. International Journal of Management Reviews 14: 104–122.

Andrade EB and Ariely D (2009) The enduring impact of transient emotions on decision making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 109: 1–8.

Babiak P and Hare RD (2006) Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. New York: Harper.

Balthazard PA, Waldman DA, Thatcher RW, et al. (2012) Differentiating transformational and non-transformational leaders on the basis of neurological imaging. Leadership Quarterly 23: 244–258.

Bandura A (1991) Social cognitive theory of self-regulation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50: 248–287.

Barsade SG and Gibson DE (2007) Why does affect matter in organizations? Academy of Management Perspectives 21: 36–59.

Barsalou LW (1999) Perceptual symbol systems. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22: 577–660. Barsalou LW (2008) Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology 59: 617–645. Bechara A, Damasio H and Damasio AR (2000) Emotion, decision making and the orbitofrontal

cortex. Cerebral Cortex 10: 295–307. Becker WJ and Cropanzano R (2010) Organizational neuroscience: The promise and prospects of

an emerging discipline. Journal of Organizational Behavior 31: 1055–1059. Becker WJ, Cropanzano R and Sanfey AG (2011) Organizational neuroscience: Taking organiza-

tional theory inside the neural black box. Journal of Management 37: 933–961. Beilock SL and Goldin-Meadow S (2010) Gesture changes thought by grounding it in action.

Psychological Science 21: 1605–1610. Bhaskar R (1975) A Realist Theory of Science. Leeds: Leeds Books. Bhaskar R (1978) On the possibility of social scientific knowledge and the limits of naturalism.

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 8: 1–28. Bhaskar R (1979) The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary

Human Sciences. Brighton: Harvester. Bhaskar R (1989) The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary

Human Sciences (2nd edn). Hemel Hempstead: Harvester. Bhaskar R (1998) The Possibility of Naturalism: A Philosophical Critique of the Contemporary

Human Sciences (3rd edn). London: Routledge. Bhaskar R (2008) A Realist Theory of Science (rev. edn). London: Routledge. Bhaskar R (2011) Reclaiming Reality. London: Routledge. Bickhard M and Campbell DT (2000) Emergence. In: Andersen PB, Emmeche C, Finnemann NO,

et al. (eds) Downward Causation: Minds, Bodies and Matter. Århus: Aarhus University Press, 322–348.

Black CM (2008) Working for a Healthier Tomorrow. London: The Stationery Office.

Healey and Hodgkinson 787

Blau PM (1974) On the Nature of Organizations. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Bunge M (1977) Emergence and mind. Neuroscience 2: 501–509. Cacioppo JT, Berntson GG and Decety J (2012) A history of social neuroscience. In: Kruglanski

AW and Stroebe W (eds) Handbook of the History of Social Psychology. New York: Psychology Press, 123–136.

Campbell DT (1990) Levels of organization, downward causation, and the selection-theory approach to evolutionary epistemology. In: Greenberg G and Tobach E (eds) Theories of the Evolution of Knowing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1–17.

Carolan MS (2005) Society, biology, and ecology: Bringing nature back into sociology’s discipli- nary narrative through critical realism. Organization & Environment 18: 393–421.

Clark A (1997) Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Clark A (2008) Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action and Cognitive Extension. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Clarke J and Cornelissen J (2011) Language, communication, and socially situated cognition in entrepreneurship. Academy of Management Review 36: 776–778.

Cook SW and Tanenhaus MK (2009) Embodied communication: Speakers’ gestures affect listen- ers’ actions. Cognition 113: 98–104.

Cornelissen JP and Clarke JS (2010) Imagining and rationalizing opportunities: Inductive reasoning and the creation and justification of new ventures. Academy of Management Review 35: 539–557.

Cornelissen JP, Clarke JS and Cienki A (2012) Sensegiving in entrepreneurial contexts: The use of metaphors in speech and gesture to gain and sustain support for novel business ventures. International Small Business Journal 30: 213–241.

Cropanzano R and Becker WJ (2013) The promise and peril of organizational neuroscience: Today and tomorrow. Journal of Management Inquiry 22: 306–310.

Cunningham WA, Raye CL and Johnson MK (2004) Implicit and explicit evaluation: fMRI cor- relates of valence, emotional intensity, and control in the processing of attitudes. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 16: 1717–1729.

Damasio AR (2010) Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. New York: Pantheon Books.

Dane E and Pratt MG (2007) Exploring intuition and its role in managerial decision making. Academy of Management Review 32: 33–54.

Debener S, Minow F, Emkes R, et al. (2012) How about taking a low-cost, small, and wireless EEG for a walk? Psychophysiology 49: 1617–1621.

Decety J and Grezes J (2006) The power of simulation: Imagining one’s own and other’s behavior. Brain Research 1079: 4–14.

Denyer D, Tranfield D and van Aken JE (2008) Developing design propositions through research synthesis. Organization Studies 29: 393–413.

DiMaggio PJ and Powell WW (1983) The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and col- lective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48: 147–160.

Donaldson L (1996) For Positivist Organization Theory. London: SAGE. Elsbach KD, Barr PS and Hargadon AB (2005) Identifying situated cognition in organizations.

Organization Science 16: 422–433. Epitropaki O and Martin R (2005) From ideal to real: A longitudinal study of the role of implicit

leadership theories on leader-member exchanges and employee outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology 90: 659–676.

Feyerabend P (1962) Explanation, reduction, and empiricism. In: Feigl H and Maxwell G (eds) Scientific Explanation, Space, and Time (Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. 3). Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 28–97.

788 Human Relations 67(7)

Fleetwood S and Ackroyd S (2004) Critical Realist Applications in Organisation and Management Studies. London: Routledge.

Fox ML, Dwyer DJ and Ganster DC (1993) Effects of stressful job demands and control on physi- ological and attitudinal outcomes in a hospital setting. Academy of Management Journal 36: 289–318.

Gavetti G, Levinthal D and Ocasio W (2007) Neo-Carnegie: The Carnegie School’s past, present, and reconstructing for the future. Organization Science 18: 523–536.

Gazzaniga MS (2006) The brain as boondoggle. Harvard Business Review 84: 66. Glenberg AM (1997) What memory is for. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20(1): 1–55. Glimcher PW (2011) Foundations of Neuroeconomic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goldin-Meadow S (1999) The role of gesture in communication and thinking. Trends in Cognitive

Sciences 3: 419–429. Goldin-Meadow S, Nusbaum H, Kelly SD, et al. (2001) Explaining math: Gesturing lightens the

load. Psychological Science 12: 516–522. Green RH (1981) Central state materialism and consciousness. Philosophy 56: 106–113. Hackman JR (2003) Learning more by crossing levels: Evidence from airplanes, hospitals, and

orchestras. Journal of Organizational Behavior 24: 905–922. Hackman JR and Oldham GR (1976) Motivation through design of work: Test of a theory.

Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 16: 250–279. Hannah ST, Avolio BJ and May DR (2011) Moral maturation and moral conation: A capacity

approach to explaining moral thought and action. Academy of Management Review 36: 663–685. Hannah ST, Balthazard PA, Waldman DA, et al. (2013) The psychological and neurological

bases of leader self-complexity and effects on adaptive decision-making. Journal of Applied Psychology 98: 393–411.

Harre R (1972) The Philosophies of Science: An Introductory Survey. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Harre R (2009) Emotions as cognitive-affective-somatic hybrids. Emotion Review 1: 294–301. Hinsz VB, Tindale RS and Vollrath DA (1997) The emerging conceptualization of groups as infor-

mation processors. Psychological Bulletin 121: 43–64. Hodgkinson GP (2013) Organizational identity and organizational identification: A critical realist

design science perspective. Group and Organization Management 38: 145–157. Hodgkinson GP and Healey MP (2008a) Cognition in organizations. Annual Review of Psychology

59: 387–417. Hodgkinson GP and Healey MP (2008b) Toward a (pragmatic) science of strategic intervention:

Design propositions for scenario planning. Organization Studies 29: 435–457. Hodgkinson GP and Healey MP (2011) Psychological foundations of dynamic capabilities:

Reflexion and reflection in strategic management. Strategic Management Journal 32: 1500– 1516.

Hodgkinson GP and Rousseau DM (2009) Bridging the rigour-relevance gap in management research: It’s already happening! Journal of Management Studies 46: 534–546.

Hodgkinson GP and Sadler-Smith E (2003) Complex or unitary? A critique and empirical re- assessment of the Allinson-Hayes Cognitive Style Index. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology 76: 243–268.

Hodgkinson GP and Starkey K (2011) Not simply returning to the same answer over and over again: Reframing relevance. British Journal of Management 22: 355–369.

Hodgkinson GP and Starkey K (2012) Extending the foundations and reach of design science: Further reflections on the role of critical realism. British Journal of Management 23: 605–610.

Hooker CA (1981a) Towards a general theory of reduction. Part I: Historical and scientific setting. Dialogue 20: 38–59.

Healey and Hodgkinson 789

Hooker CA (1981b) Towards a general theory of reduction. Part II: Identity in reduction. Dialogue 20: 201–236.

Hutchins E (1995) Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. James N (1989) Emotional labor: Skill and work in the social regulation of feelings. The

Sociological Review 37: 15–42. Janis I and Mann L (1977) Decision Making: A Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice, and

Commitment. New York: Free Press. Johnson EO, Kamilaris TC, Chrousos GP, et al. (1992) Mechanisms of stress: A dynamic over-

view of hormonal and behavioral homeostasis. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews 16: 115–130.

Karlsson N, Loewenstein G and Seppi D (2009) The ostrich effect: Selective attention to informa- tion. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 38: 95–115.

Keat R and Urry J (1975) Social Theory as Science. London: Routledge. Kim J (1992) Multiple realization and the metaphysics of reduction. Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research 52: 1–26. Kim J (1998) Mind in a Physical World. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kim J (1999) Making sense of emergence. Philosophical Studies 95: 3–36. Knoch D, Gianotti LRR, Pascual-Leone A, et al. (2006) Disruption of right prefrontal cortex by

low-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation induces risk-taking behavior. Journal of Neuroscience 26: 6469–6472.

Lashley KS (1930) Basic neural mechanisms in behavior. Psychological Review 37: 1–24. Laureiro-Martínez D, Brusoni S and Zollo M (2010) The neuroscientific foundations of the

exploration−exploitation dilemma. Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics 3: 95–115.

Laureiro-Martínez D, Brusoni S, Canessa N and Zollo M (2014) Understanding the exploration−exploitation dilemma: An fMRI study of attention control and decision-making performance. Strategic Management Journal. DOI: 10.1002/smj.2221.

Lawrence A, Clark L, Labuzetta JN, et al. (2008) The innovative brain. Nature 456: 168–169. Leavitt K, Fong CT and Greenwald AG (2011) Asking about well-being gets you half an answer:

Intra-individual processes of implicit and explicit job attitudes. Journal of Organizational Behavior 32: 672–687.

Lee N, Senior C and Butler MJR (2012) The domain of organizational cognitive neuroscience: Theoretical and empirical challenges. Journal of Management 38: 921–931.

Lieberman MD (2000) Intuition: A social cognitive neuroscience approach. Psychological Bulletin 126: 109–137.

Lieberman MD (2007) Social cognitive neuroscience: A review of core processes. Annual Review of Psychology 58: 259–289.

Lindebaum D (2013) Pathologizing the healthy but ineffective: Some ethical reflections on using neuroscience in leadership research. Journal of Management Inquiry 22: 295–305.

Lindebaum D and Zundel M (2013) Not quite a revolution: Scrutinizing organizational neurosci- ence in leadership studies. Human Relations 66: 857–877.

Loewenstein G (2006) The pleasures and pains of information. Science 312: 704–706. Loewenstein G, Rick S and Cohen JD (2008) Neuroeconomics. Annual Review of Psychology 59:

647–672. Lord RG and Emrich CG (2000) Thinking outside the box by looking inside the box: Extending the

cognitive revolution in leadership research. Leadership Quarterly 11: 551–579. Lord RG and Maher KJ (1991) Leadership and Information Processing: Linking Perceptions and

Performance. Boston, MA: Unwin Hyman. McClure SM, Laibson DI, Loewenstein G, et al. (2004) Separate neural systems value immediate

and delayed monetary rewards. Science 306: 503–507.

790 Human Relations 67(7)

McLagan PA (2013) A call to watch our paradigms! Journal of Management Inquiry 22: 314–316.

March JG and Simon HA (1993) Organizations. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Miller KD and Tsang EWK (2011) Testing management theories: Critical realist philosophy and

research methods. Strategic Management Journal 32: 139–158. Mintzberg H (1976) Planning on left side and managing on right. Harvard Business Review 54:

49–58. Moll J, Zahn R, de Oliveira-Souza R, et al. (2005) The neural basis of human moral cognition.

Nature Reviews Neuroscience 6: 799–809. Morris JA and Feldman DC (1996) The dimensions, antecedents, and consequences of emotional

labour. Academy of Management Review 21: 986–1010. Muller JL, Sommer M, Wagner V, et al. (2003) Abnormalities in emotion processing within corti-

cal and subcortical regions in criminal psychopaths: Evidence from a functional magnetic resonance imaging study using pictures with emotional content. Biological Psychiatry 54: 152–162.

Murphy N and Brown WS (2007) Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? Philosophical and Neurobiological Perspectives on Moral Responsibility and Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Nagel E (1961) The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Nicolaou N, Shane S, Cherkas L, et al. (2008a) Is the tendency to engage in entrepreneurship genetic? Management Science 54: 167–179.

Nicolaou N, Shane S, Cherkas L and Spector TD (2008b) The influence of sensation seeking in the heritability of entrepreneurship. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal 2: 7–21.

Niedenthal PM (2007) Embodying emotion. Science 316: 1002–1005. Norman D (1988) The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Double Day. Ohira H, Matsunaga M, Kimura K, et al. (2011) Chronic stress modulates neural and cardiovascu-

lar responses during reversal learning. Neuroscience 193: 193–204. Pandza K and Thorpe R (2010) Management as design, but what kind of design? An appraisal of

the design science analogy for management. British Journal of Management 21: 171–186. Polanyi M (1968) Life’s irreducible structure. Science 160: 1308–1312. Postle BR (2006) Working memory as an emergent property of the mind and brain. Neuroscience

139: 23–38. Postrel S and Rumelt RP (1992) Incentives, routines, and self-command. Industrial and Corporate

Change 1: 397–425. Powell TC (2011) Neurostrategy. Strategic Management Journal 32: 1484–1499. Powell TC and Puccinelli NM (2012) The brain as substitute for strategic organization. Strategic

Organization 10: 207–214. Powell TC, Lovallo D and Fox CR (2011) Behavioral strategy. Strategic Management Journal

32: 1369–1386. Reid M (2001) Organization, trust and control: A realist analysis. Organization Studies 22: 201–

228. Rizzolatti G and Craighero L (2004) The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience

27: 169–192. Robey D and Taggart W (1981) Measuring managers’ minds: The assessment of style in human

information processing. Academy of Management Review 6: 375–383. Robinson SL and Morrison EW (2000) The development of psychological contract breach and

violation: A longitudinal study. Journal of Organizational Behavior 21: 525–546. Rueger A (2000) Physical emergence, diachronic and synchronic. Synthese 124: 297–322.

Healey and Hodgkinson 791

Rumelhart DE, McClelland JL and the PDP Research Group (1986) Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press.

Sadler-Smith E (2012) Before virtue: Biology, brain, behavior, and the ‘moral sense’. Business Ethics Quarterly 22: 351–376.

Satpute AB and Lieberman MD (2006) Integrating automatic and controlled processes into neuro- cognitive models of social cognition. Brain Research 1079: 86–97.

Sayer A (2010) Reductionism in social science. In: Lee RE (ed.) Questioning Nineteenth Century Assumptions about Knowledge: II Reductionism. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 5–39.

Senior C, Lee N and Butler M (2011) Organizational cognitive neuroscience. Organization Science 22: 804–815.

Seo MG and Barrett LF (2007) Being emotional during decision making: Good or bad? An empiri- cal investigation. Academy of Management Journal 50: 923–940.

Sharp C, Monterosso J and Montague PR (2012) Neuroeconomics: A bridge for translational research. Biological Psychiatry 72: 87–92.

Simon HA (1969) The Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Smith ER and Semin GR (2004) Socially situated cognition: Cognition in its social context.

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 36: 53–117. Smith ER and Semin GR (2007) Situated social cognition. Current Directions in Psychological

Science 16: 132–135. Spiegelhalder K, Ohlendorf S, Regen W, et al. (2014) Interindividual synchronization of brain

activity during live verbal communication. Behavioral Brain Research 258: 75–79. Spitzer M, Fischbacher U, Herrnberger B, et al. (2007) The neural signature of social norm compli-

ance. Neuron 56: 185–196. Teece DJ (2007) Explicating dynamic capabilities: The nature and microfoundations of (sustain-

able) enterprise performance. Strategic Management Journal 28: 1319–1350. Tranfield D and Starkey K (1998) The nature, social organization and promotion of management

research: Towards policy. British Journal of Management 9: 341–353. Tsang EWK and Kwan KM (1999) Replication and theory development in organizational science:

A critical realist perspective. Academy of Management Review 24: 759–780. Volk S and Kohler T (2012) Brains and games: Applying neuroeconomics to organizational

research. Organizational Research Methods 15: 522–552. Wang L and Murnighan JK (2011) On greed. Academy of Management Annals 5: 279–316. Wilson M (2002) Six views of embodied cognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 9: 625–636. Wimsatt WC (2000) Emergence as non-aggregativity and the biases of reductionism. Foundations

of Science 5: 269–297. Wong KFE, Yik M and Kwong JYY (2006) Understanding the emotional aspects of escalation of

commitment: The role of negative affect. Journal of Applied Psychology 91: 282–297. Zhao H, Wayne SJ, Glibkowski BC, et al. (2007) The impact of psychological contract breach on

work-related outcomes: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology 60: 647–680.

Mark P Healey is Lecturer in Strategic Management at Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK. He received his PhD in Management Sciences from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. His research focuses on cognition in organizations, particu- larly applied to strategic decision making and the wider strategic management process. His research has appeared in leading scholarly journals including Annual Review of Psychology, Organization Studies and Strategic Management Journal. [[email protected]]

792 Human Relations 67(7)

Gerard P Hodgkinson is Head of the Behavioural Science Group, Associate Dean (Programme Quality), and Professor of Strategic Management and Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. His current research interests centre on the psychological foundations of strategic management, applied psychological measurement, and the nature and sig- nificance of management and organizational research for academia and wider publics. The (co-) author of more than 80 scholarly articles and contributions to edited volumes on these and related topics, his work has appeared in such outlets as Human Relations, Journal of Management Studies, Organizational Research Methods, Organization Studies, Personnel Psychology and Risk Analysis. He has also (co-)authored three books and co-edited nine others. An earlier version of his 2011 article with Dr Mark P Healey on the psychological foundations of strategic adaptation (dynamic capabilities), which was published in Strategic Management Journal, won the Business Policy and Strategy Division’s Sumantra Ghoshal Research and Practice Award at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management (Chicago, IL). [[email protected]]