This project BLINDSPOT investigates key cognitive challenges faced by modern organizations with the aim of developing a comprehensive sociological approach to study the social properties of cognition. Research on error detection, attention allocation, and recognizant innovation will be conducted in three distinct settings. The research question that cuts across the socio-cognitive challenges asks whether and how diversity contributes to performance. 1) We first test whether social context, understood at the most basic level as the composition of a small collectivity, affects the cognitive activity of pricing. To do so, we use experimental market methods to test whether ethnic and gender diversity deflate price bubbles by disrupting herding behaviour. 2) The second study tests how the social structure of attention affects valuation. The activities involve error correction and accuracy of prediction in estimates by securities analysts; the method is two-mode network analysis; and the timing, intensity, and diversity of attention networks are the effects to be tested. 3) Whereas our first two tests examine relations among competitors, our third examines relations within and across collaborative teams. In studying the network properties of creativity, the challenge is recognizant innovation, the activity involves recording sessions in the field of music, the method is cultural network analysis, and the effects to be tested are the combined effects of stylistic diversity and social structure.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR prof. David Stark, University of Warwick
PARTNERS
Prof. Simone FERRIANI, Department of Management Sciences, University of Bologna;
University of the Italian Switerzland
Duration: 5 years (01/09/2016 – 31/08/2021)