Leigh L Thompson John M Levine.

Leigh L Thompson John M Levine, and David M Messick, ed Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999 364 pp $3995 paper.

Cognitive science has focused in succession the study of the workings of the individual mind. As the emphasis is in succession how an individual thinks, early cognitive research conceptualized cognition as limited by the individual brain, largely separated from the social environment, if it were not that this perspective is changing. Rather than playing a nonexistent or peripheral character the social context is increasingly seen as being an important input to and/or part of the cognitive proces (Nye and Brower, 1996; Resnick, 1991) Shared Cognition in Organizations is an edited collection of chapters that muses this growing interest of cognition in the social environment. As the editors note, this work emerged out of a parley organized to explore "the implications of viewing cognition as a fundamentally social activity" (p xv) if it be not that this book is not solitary for cognitive and/or social psychologists interested in this recent exciting perspective on cognition, it is also for organizational theorists interested in the management of knowledge. With t he increasing use of teams in organizations, research forward social cognition that investigates by what means social resources--whether it be individuals and/or norms--are mobilized in the cognitive proces would have rich implications for organizational theorists' research upon the efficient and effective integration and creation of knowledge.

This work is divided into three sections. The first section, "Knowledge Systems" deals with by what mode knowledge is created, stored, and acted about within organizations. The chapters in this section highlight for what reason social processes determine the individual or shared cognition that come forths Moreland shows that the social activity in arrange training builds a transactive memory classification of who-knows-what that significantly improves the group's performance. Higgens plant that the seemingly inconsequential act of tailoring one's messages to an audience (i.e., audience tuning) changes one's intelligence and knowledge in the proces Stasser's chapter upon unshared information indicates that collection members tend to share simply common information, such that the shared cognition in a assemblage is not necessarily the additive combination of all members' knowledge. This character of unshared information is also highlighted in Messick's chapter forward dirty secrets. While Stasser hints various interventions (e.g., expert part assignments) to reveal u nshared information, Messick draws attention to organizational devices, so as knowledge shields and smoke-machines, that are intentionally wager in place to conceal information and hide the organization's privys so as to protect them from potential or real wrongdoing. The recurring focus across these chapters is therefore the social processe of the like kind as information sharing and assemblage training, in shaping the individual's and/or the shared knowledge base.

The next to the first section, "Emotional and Motivational Systems" illustrates the impact of individual motivations and emotions upon cognitive processing. While the chapters in the first section are predominantly upon collective processing, the chapters in the inferior section focus on individual cognitive processing. They nevertheless consistently emphasize the character of the social context in provoking various motivations and emotions, which in inflect influence an individual's cognitive processing. For example, Jost Kruglanski, and Simon point out to that in situations with environmental noise (eg increased uncertainty and difficulty), people's motivation for cognitive closure heightens, thus strengthening their adherence to the status quo In a related vein, Tetlock argues that social contextual presss particularly one's accountability to external constituents, increase one's motivation to justify one's actions. Unfortunately, this be deriveds in cognitive biases such as defensive bolstering. This theme of social factors permeat ing individual cognitive processing is further protracted in Kramer's chapter on collective paranoia in knowledge communities. He argues that social uncertainty (i.e., uncertainty about others' motives) follows in rumination and heightened self-consciousness, which exacerbate distrust and suspicion among commonalty thus impeding knowledge sharing in a knowledge community. Thompson Nadler, and Kim rectify the traditional pay no heed to of the impact of emotion forward the cognitive process by discussing by what mode affect influences not only a negotiator's actions and answers but also the responses of the opposing party during the negotiation. Rather than being contradictory to rational cognitive processing, the authors argue that emotion can be used strategically to achieve one's goals in negotiation. What mostly of the chapters in this section highlight is that individual cognitive processing is sensitive to the social connection The social context is not solitary an input to the cognitive proces (eg Jost Kruglanski, and Simon's cha pter) unless also part of the cognitive processing (eg Tetlock's chapter).