Conceptualising Organisational Organic Cognition: A Fifth Dimension of organisational kinetics

Abstract Organisations constantly find themselves in a dynamic environment, where technology is disrupting and influencing their way of working, artificial intelligence and automation is being adopted, market segments are volatile and rapidly growing, regulators are ever evolving and complex, and stakeholders have rapidly changing expectations. Theories of organisational change such as dynamic capabilities, organisational cognition, absorptive capacity and organisational learning, offer comprehensive explanations as to how organisations react to change. These views, however, offer insufficient understanding of the cognitive process by which a group of people collectively make sense of what changes in the environment mean and how appropriate action should be taken. This study therefore builds on the organisational change phenomenon with a mindset of organisational organic cognition as a fifth dimension of organisational kinetics. The study argued that organisational organic cognition is viewed as an organisation-wide capacity of sensing, interpreting, learning and adapting to constantly evolving environment and convert experiences into knowledge and respond timely to achieve organisational goal. The study concludes that organisational organic cognition relates with organisational kinetics as a mechanism that connects organisational information, organisational choices and organisational adaptation. Keywords: Organisational Organic Cognition, Organisational Kinetics, organisational agility, organisational learning, sensemaking