Degree Type
Dissertation
Date of Award
2020
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Theses & dissertations (College of Business)
Major
Business and Technology (Management)
First Advisor
Marc H. Anderson
Abstract
Managerial cognition research adopts theories from cognitive and social psychology to study how executives’ information processing approach and other cognitive processes affect the decisions they make and ultimately the firms they lead. This dissertation consists of three papers that draw on construal level theory to study how CEOs’ tendency toward thinking at abstract versus concrete construals (i.e., thinking more abstractly or concretely) influences their firms’ strategic orientation toward being more innovative. In the first essay, I develop a theoretical framework that draws on construal level theory to explain how CEOS' focus of attention and cognitive representations affect their strategic choices in terms of futurity and riskiness. In the second essay, I extend this framework by relating CEO construal levels to the R&D intensity of firms, and also examine the impact of CEO integrative complexity on R&D effectiveness. I propose and test hypotheses using archival measures of cognition in a sample of public high-tech firms. In the third essay, I examine the role of CEO construal level and cognitive flexibility on firm-level exploration and exploitation using a survey of CEOs of small and medium-sized Korean firms. Results of the second and third studies support the impact of CEO construal levels, integrative complexity, and cognitive flexibility on firm innovation attributes.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.31274/etd-20200902-134
Copyright Owner
Mehdi Samimi
Copyright Date
2020-08
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
File Size
130 pages
Recommended Citation
Samimi, Mehdi, "CEO construal levels and firm innovation" (2020). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 18215.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/etd/18215
