Multi-ontology, sense-making and the emergence of the future

This paper states that the most important cognitive framework that influences why we comprehend what we do and not something else is tied up with the way we think about causality. The notion of causality is relevant whether we refer to everyday decisions made by people or landmark decisions made by large corporations. The paper further argues that the main source for increasing effectiveness in decision-making, and therefore in our ability to influence the emergence of the future to our advantage, derives from the explicit recognition that there are different types of systems in which different causal assumptions apply. The paper states that both the nature of strategic landscape and the time frame at stake, the spatio-temporal context, influences the causal assumptions that apply. At the end of the article descriptive examples are used to assist the reader's sense-making. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.