Call for Papers

Call for short papers (pdf)

Attention is the key human resource, and the foundation on which collective organizing depends: as Simon (1973, p. 270) emphasized, “attention is the chief bottleneck in organizational activity.” Building on Simon’s legacy (1947), the attention-based view of the firm (ABV; Ocasio, 1997) has placed this central yet scarce resource front and center. The ABV positions attention as the central mechanism linking cognition, communication, and organizational structure. While ABV research has generated manifold important insights into a wide array of phenomena (Brielmaier & Friesl, 2023), emerging technological, societal, and geopolitical transformations invite us to reflect on how managerial and organizational attention are regulated and coordinated within today’s post-Chandlerian organizations (Joseph et al., 2024; Ocasio et al., 2023). Against this backdrop, our sub-theme identifies two connected areas that deserve deeper exploration: (1) emerging phenomena that invite us to explore how attentional regulation and control are accomplished, as well as the implications thereof, and (2) the methodological and theoretical approaches needed to study these developments.

Societal and Technological Trends Reshaping Attention and its Regulation

Organizational activity today is increasingly shaped by the interplay of algorithms, AI systems, and human decision-makers (Hillebrand et al., 2025). Generative AI, for example, is becoming embedded in strategic processes and may broaden the range of stimuli that decision-makers are able to attend to (Laamanen et al., 2025). Yet such AI systems also foreground particular issues while sidelining others, narrowing managers’ attentional focus and potentially drawing attention away from important issues. Similarly, platforms like LinkedIn shape how managers access and prioritize strategic information (Heavey et al., 2020), with experimental evidence showing that social-media exposure can shift strategic preferences based on what dominates one’s feed (Brielmaier et al., 2025). This becomes particularly problematic when misinformation or biased content circulates on these platforms, using our limited attention, and the problem is compounded by the empirical reality that attention control is an even scarcer resource (Laureiro-Martínez, 2014; Ocasio, 2025). Thus, algorithms and AI increasingly operate as attentional regulators, shaping salience and relevance within and beyond organizational boundaries (see Ocasio, 2025).

Beyond technological forces, societal and organizational changes have fostered more fluid and participatory forms of strategizing that rely less on rigid hierarchies and fixed roles (Splitter et al., 2024). Although hierarchy remains consequential, mechanisms of attentional regulation are increasingly complemented or mediated by networks, platforms, and distributed forms of coordination. Applying the ABV to settings where attention regulation and collective focus emerge with less prominent hierarchical structures has only just begun (Tonellato et al., 2024). Importantly, most of our studies have focused on organizations and participants that belong only to the 15% of the population, leaving the organizational dynamics of the other 85% largely uncovered. Recent calls in our field have urged expanding the geographical basis to include the Global South, and this sub-theme supports that call: “When we pay less attention to 85% of humans and an even larger percentage of organizations, we are sure to miss fundamental aspects of how people, organizations, and markets interact” (Acquaah et al., 2025, p. 2). Moreover, there are important environmental challenges that affect different parts of the world in disproportionately different ways, shaping what individuals and organizations must attend to. Understanding how such attentional differences transform individual and organizational actions and industry dynamics remains an urgent area of study (Hoffman & Ocasio, 2001).
Thus, it is our imperative to understand how attention evolves as a process of dynamic orchestration that has to cope with evolving configurations of hierarchy, social networks, environmental changes, and digital tools across diverse contexts (Ocasio & Love, 2025).

Methods and Theory: Capturing Attentional Dynamics and Extending the ABV

The ABV has always embraced ontological, methodological, and theoretical pluralism. The transformations described above reinforce the value of continued innovation in how we study attention and capture attentional dynamics within firms. Traditional measures of attention such as shareholder letters (e.g., Hambrick & Cho, 2006) remain useful but come with limitations. Recent advances include ethnographic and observational methods that trace attention as it unfolds in situated practice (Splitter et al., 2024) as well as laboratory experiments that provide valuable opportunities to measure individual attention implicitly (Brielmaier et al., 2025) or explicitly (Laureiro-Martínez et al., 2023). Opportunities also lie in field experiments, which may bridge the gap between laboratory designs and real-world organizational contexts. Developing robust methods for capturing and measuring attention remains a key frontier for expanding ABV research across phenomena (Joseph et al., 2024).

Beyond methodological innovation, these trends and new phenomena also invite deeper theoretical connections (Ocasio et al., 2023). Cognitive and microfoundational perspectives on managerial attention (Laureiro-Martínez, 2014), practice-based and sociomaterial (Brielmaier & Friesl, 2023), as well as communicative and discursive perspectives (Ocasio et al., 2018), each offer important insights into how attentional processes are constituted and regulated across levels of analysis. Research on the effect of emotions and affect on attention further enriches the ABV by exploring how attention is shaped not only by deliberative processes but also by affective ones (Brusoni et al., 2020; Vuori, 2024).

A Forum for Dialogue and further development of the ABV

This sub-theme aims to bring together scholars from diverse methodological and theoretical backgrounds to advance the future development of the ABV. We seek to provide an inclusive forum for discussing the developments and frontiers outlined above, and for going beyond them. We therefore invite a wide range of papers.

Submissions may address one or more of the following questions, but need not be limited to them:

• How do emerging technologies (generative AI, digital platforms, data analytics) embedded within hybrid organizational forms (hierarchy, networks, algorithmic regulation) govern attentional coordination and control across boundaries?

• In the context of such technologies, what abilities are needed for decision-makers and organizations to better control their attention and achieve better outcomes?

• To what extent do external attention regulators such as platform algorithms, media, or stakeholder activism interact with or reshape organizational attention structures and with which consequences?

• How do deliberative and emotional processes influence attentional patterns across individual, team, and organizational levels?

• What methodological innovations allow us to better capture cross-level attentional dynamics?

• Acquaah, M., Armanios, D. E., Canales, R., Doering, L., Fry, C., Laureiro-Martínez, D., & Pierce, L. (2025). Organizations in the Global South [Special issue call for papers]. Organization Science.
• Brielmaier, C., & Friesl, M. (2023). The attention-based view: Review and conceptual extension towards situated attention. International Journal of Management Reviews, 25(1), 99–129.
• Brielmaier, C., Reis, M., Friesl, M., & Pfister, R. (2025). Who sits at the table? LinkedIn exposure shapes managers’ situated attention and strategic preferences. Long Range Planning, 58(6) Article 102586.
• Brusoni, S., Laureiro-Martínez, D., Canessa, N., & Zollo, M. (2020). Exploring exploration: The role of affective states as forces that hinder change. Industrial and Corporate Change, 29(1), 207–223.
• Cho, T. S., & Hambrick, D. C. (2006). Attention as the mediator between top management team characteristics and strategic change: The case of airline deregulation. Organization Science, 17(4), 453–469.
• Heavey, C., Simsek, Z., Kyprianou, C., & Risius, M. (2020). How do strategic leaders engage with social media? A theoretical framework for research and practice. Strategic Management Journal, 41(8), 1490–1527.
• Hillebrand, L., Raisch, S., & Schad, J. (2025). Managing with artificial intelligence: An integrative framework. Academy of Management Annals, 19(1), 343–375.
• Hoffman, A. J., & Ocasio, W. (2001). Not all events are attended equally: Toward a middle-range theory of industry attention to external events. Organization Science, 12(4), 414–434.
• Joseph, J., Laureiro-Martínez, D., Nigam, A., Ocasio, W., & Rerup, C. (2024). Research frontiers on the attention-based view of the firm. Strategic Organization, 22(1), 6–17.
• Laamanen, T., Weiser, A. K., von Krogh, G., & Ocasio, W. (2025). Artificial intelligence in adaptive strategy creation and implementation: Toward enhanced attentional control in strategy processes. Long Range Planning, 58(4) Article 102561.
• Laureiro-Martínez, D. (2014). Cognitive control capabilities, routinization propensity, and decision-making performance. Organization Science, 25(4), 1111–1133.
• Laureiro-Martínez, D., Arrieta, J. P., & Brusoni, S. (2023). Microfoundations of problem solving: Attentional engagement predicts problem-solving strategies. Organization Science, 34(6), 2207–2230.
• Ocasio, W. (1997). Towards an attention-based view of the firm. Strategic Management Journal, 18(S1), 187–206.
• Ocasio, W. (2025). Attentional control: Institutions, management, organizations, and algorithms. Journal of Management Inquiry, 34(1), 3–18.
• Ocasio, W., & Love, E. G. (2026). The attention-based view of the firm in strategic management. In S. Bisui, L. M. Klüppel, M. J. Leiblein, & J. J. Reuer (Eds.), A guide to key theories for strategic management (pp. 147–168). Edward Elgar Publishing.
• Ocasio, W., Laamanen, T., & Vaara, E. (2018). Communication and attention dynamics: An attention-based view of strategic change. Strategic Management Journal, 39(1), 155–167.
• Ocasio, W., Yakis-Douglas, B., Boynton, D., Laamanen, T., Rerup, C., Vaara, E., & Whittington, R. (2023). It’s a different world: A dialog on the attention-based view in a post-Chandlerian world. Journal of Management Inquiry, 32(2), 107–119.
• Simon, H. A. (1947). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organizations. Macmillan.
• Simon, H. A. (1973). Applying information technology to organization design. Public Administration Review, 33(3), 268–278.
• Splitter, V., Seidl, D., & Whittington, R. (2024). Getting heard? How employees learn to gain senior management attention in inclusive strategy processes. Strategic Management Journal, 45(10), 1877–1925.
• Tonellato, M., Tasselli, S., Conaldi, G., Lerner, J., & Lomi, A. (2024). A microstructural approach to self-organizing: The emergence of attention networks. Organization Science, 35(2), 496–524.
• Vuori, T. O. (2024). Emotions and attentional engagement in the attention-based view of the firm. Strategic Organization, 22(1), 189–210.