 Teamworking and the "sharpening" of peripherical visionMiguel Pina e Cunha and Robert Chia Nova SBE Working Paper Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics Abstract: Managers and organizations are normally focussed on a number of key issues and targets, such as strategic positioning, operations, competitors, internal processes, human relations, etc. Focus is fundamental to effective exploitation. Focus, however, carries with it some attendant risks. It may, for example, lead to an underestimation of critical moves taking place at the periphery outside the focus of attention. In such instances, peripheral vision becomes crucial to organizational survival. In this paper, we discuss how teams and teamworking may help re-educate attention and in so doing sharpen peripheral vision in organizational contexts. A typology is built, which specifies how different types of teams deal with focus and periphery in practice. Next, we discuss the specific cases of the groups that are most oriented towards the periphery to uncover how they manage collective action and collective imagination. The paper finishes with a number of practical suggestions derived from the previous theoretical work. Six strategic practices are critically analyzed: zooming, improvisation, bricolage, scenario thinking, wild cards and weak signals. Keywords: periphery; peripheral vision; teams; weak signals; minimal structures (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unl:unlfep:wp476 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Nova SBE Working Paper Series from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics Contact information at EDIRC. |
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