Perspective-taking as an organizational capability

Abstract

This article proposes perspective-taking as an organizational capability to facilitate the knowledge integration that is widely posited as crucial to organizational learning and innovation. Building on psychological research at the individual level, the article examines how perspective-taking might be scaled to an organizational capability that can vary in strength and character. The article discusses how individual-level antecedents can be shaped to produce perspective-taking at the organizational level, and shows how perspective-taking capability might be a useful concept for strategic management by examining how it adds to absorptive capacity and ambidexterity research.