Theory of Distributed Cognition and Its Application in Management Practice

Cognitive theory is the theoretical basis of understanding and solving managerial decision-making problems. Distributed cognition theory goes beyond traditional cognitive theory, which assumes that the cognition is confined to the individual, by emphasizing the social aspects of cognition, i.e., the individual and his/her environment. In this paper, we argue that the converging mechanism is a crucial process of distributed cognition. We propose three types of converging mechanism and analyze their applications with some management cases.