Quantum cognition in management research: A novel methodological framework with an application to causal ambiguity

Abstract

We propose a novel methodological framework based on the emerging field of quantum cognition and illustrate its application to a central problem in management and strategy research: causal ambiguity. The current literature often assumes that causal ambiguity—the difficulty of managers to understand the causal link between resources and outcomes at the basis of a firm's performance—can be reduced through learning. This literature overlooks the fact that causal ambiguity reduction is impossible when causal systems exhibit so-called complementary properties. Building upon quantum cognition—specifically the idea of complementarity as an alternative to causality—we illustrate that causal ambiguity is only a special case of ambiguity and we offer a novel methodological framework to model what we label as ‘acausal ambiguity’, which refers to the insurmountable limit of managers to achieve causal ambiguity reduction. Managers can, of course, cognize some causal links. However, this comes at the price of being agnostic about complementary ones. The implications of this novel methodological framework applied to causal ambiguity are twofold: while complementarity opacifies the attentional faculties of managers, it also accounts for the cognitive origins of novelty.