Re-organizing for Innovation: Top Management Attention as a Driver of Strategic Renewal

Paper in proceeding, 2011

Abstract: Research on how managers implement change in their organizations during crisis is of growing interest. Today’s decision-makers are inundated by stimuli and even more so during crisis. Naturally this prevents all events to be attended to equally. Attention as an important factor in decision-making processes has long been noticed by organizational scholars and attention established as a valuable and scarce resource in organizations. Despite this, few longitudinal studies seem to have used an attention-based view to examine how management attention is used as a driver. By providing thick empirical data and the lens of attention-based view within a strategic change context, this paper aims to further understandings and add to actionable knowledge relating to top management attention as a driver for strategic change. Empirical data has been gathered over a period of four years.