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Attentional homogeneity in industries: the effect of discretion
Author(s) -
Abrahamson Eric,
Hambrick Donald C.
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
journal of organizational behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.938
H-Index - 177
eISSN - 1099-1379
pISSN - 0894-3796
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-1379(199711)18:1+<513::aid-job905>3.0.co;2-8
Subject(s) - discretion , homogeneity (statistics) , psychology , social psychology , economics , cognitive psychology , positive economics , political science , law , mathematics , statistics
Industries differ in how homogeneous they are in terms of managerial cognitions. This study draws upon the concept of discretion, arguing that the more latitude managers have in an industry, the more varied their companies' attention patterns will be. Focusing on 14 industries assessed as differing widely in their discretion, we measured intra‐industry attentional homogeneity using Computer Assisted Text Analysis of letters to shareholders in corporate annual reports. As expected, the greater the discretion in an industry, the less the attentional homogeneity. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.