On the Role of the Organizational Predictive Mind in Change Processes

We build on recent approaches in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience which view the brain as a “prediction machine” stating that predictions of future states is based on past experiences. We show how this approach can be applied to the context of organizations. We develop the notion of the “organizational predictive mind” (OPM). This term allows us to combine scattered ideas from organizational theory and organizational learning under one holistic perspective. We propose two kinds of OPM: The “radical OPM” sheds light on how organizations influence the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms of their actors, and the “metaphorical OPM” explains how organizations as a whole behave in complex environments. Central to the notion of the OPM is the claim that organizations behave in cycles of self‐fulling hypotheses, which hinders their capacity to change and innovate. We will explore how the concept of organizational unlearning can help to overcome these implications.