Purpose: To explore the influence of marketing AI on marketing managers' attention allocation to leverage customer relationships in different business-to-business contexts. Method: Abductive approach and multiple case study, data collection was made by qualitative semi-structured interviews and secondary data collection. Conclusion: The study identified both similarities and differences within three main categories across two industrial clusters where marketing AI effect marketing managers’ attention allocation in B2B relationships. Marketing AI is shown to affect B2B relationships through marketing managers’ attentional selection towards efficiencies and/or new opportunities. Marketing AI is shown to influence marketing managers’ attention allocation by distorting the focus of attention on relational dynamics by introducing automated or augmented marketing AI solutions into the relationship.

Due to the importance of corporate entrepreneurship and leadership innovation when nurturing and building the company, along with keeping up with competition in an ever developing world these concepts have become more of an importance over the past few years. Corporate Entrepreneurship has an important role in building innovation and is needed to avoid disruption. However, the level of conscious attention given to CE within Swedish SMEs is still to some extent unknown. This study aims to investigate the CE initiatives produced and the active awareness put towards it along with the extent entrepreneurial leadership plays a role in the organizational innovation. The two research questions are: How are corporate leaders paying attention to corporate entrepreneurship? & How is entrepreneurial leadership enhancing leadership innovation in Swedish SMEs? This study focuses on Swedish small to medium-sized companies of various sizes and within different industries but also acting within the same ownership structure. For this reason, the relationship and entrepreneurial culture within the whole organization is also of interest. Therefore, a total of four interviews with six individuals from four different companies were conducted. The data was analyzed using a thematic analysis method. The results showed that there is an unconscious use of CE approaches and initiative along with the important role of entrepreneurial leadership to maintain and develop the organization.

[pt] Diante da complexidade do ambiente de negócios contemporâneo e tendo em vista as limitações da racionalidade humana, os estudos da teoria do comportamento organizacional propostos e a teoria da visão baseada na atenção, este estudo objetiva diagnosticar o nível de atenção a temas críticos para a proteção empresarial e verificar a percepção sobre o nível de risco de situações propostas, por meio de pesquisa aplicada a profissionais que desempenham função gratificada em uma organização do setor de óleo e gás. Para tanto, com base em estudos desenvolvidos de atenção e percepção de risco, foi realizada pesquisa quantitativa de natureza descritiva, respondida voluntariamente por 409 profissionais ocupantes de função gratificada de diferentes áreas da empresa: de negócios e corporativas, de diferentes níveis organizacionais, níveis de formação, tempo de empresa e idade. Os resultados apontam que os temas relacionados à logística de produtos e pessoas são os assuntos com maior engajamento na captação da atenção, análise dos riscos relacionados e sobre os quais os profissionais participantes desta pesquisa investem mais tempo e esforço na busca de mais informações/conhecimentos. / [en] Given the complexity of the contemporary business environment and considering the limitations of human rationality, the proposed studies of the organizational behavior theory and the vision based in attention theory, this study aims to diagnose the level of attention to critical issues for corporate security and verify and the perception of the risk level of proposed situations, through research applied to professionals who perform a gratified position in an organization in the oil and gas sector. Therefore, based on studies developed on attention and risk perception, a quantitative descriptive research was carried out, answered voluntarily by 409 professionals occupying a gratified position in different areas on the company: business and the corporate, from different organizational levels, education level, time in the organization and age. The results show that topics related to the topics of products and people are the subjects with the greatest engagement in attracting attention, analyzing the related risks and on which the professionals participating in this research invest more time and the search for more information/knowledge.

This thesis examines the decision-making regarding market-orientation within specific types of Swedish state-owned enterprises, namely the Public Business Authorities (Affärsverk, PBAs), during a period of institutional upheaval in the 1980s. It specifically focuses on the leadership groups – director general and board – of the Energy PBA (Statens Vattenfallsverk), the Postal PBA (Postverket), and the Tele PBA (Televerket). The thesis adopts a theoretical framework that integrates the perspectives of varieties of capitalism and the attention-based view of the firm, which posits that firm behaviour is determined by where and how attention is directed within the organisation. The thesis delineates two distinct leadership strategies for addressing market-orientation: the deliberative institutional change strategy, characterised by consensus-building through negotiation using existing modes of strategic interaction, and the entrepreneurial institutional change strategy, characterised by leveraging existing modes of strategic interaction to transcend them and forge novel paths towards new modes of strategic interaction. The former was applied by the Postal and Energy PBAs, while the latter was applied by the Tele PBA.

ABSTRACT           Date:   2023-05-31      Level:   Bachelor thesis in Business Administration, 15cr      Institution:   School of Business, Society and Engineering, Mälardalen University Authors:     Malin Godenius (95/10/06)   Victoria Karlson (94/04/01)   Sophia Röse (99/12/06)      Title:   Unravelling the Dynamics of Managerial Attention Allocation: Exploring the Impact of Digital Technologies and Heuristics      Supervisor:   Edward Gillmore      Keywords:   Attention-Based View, Heuristics, Digital Technologies, Digital Transformation, Attention Allocation, Managers      Research questions:  RQ1: What effect do digital technologies have on managers' attention allocation? RQ2: How do digital technologies substitute or complement managers' heuristics?      Purpose:   This study aims to explore and understand how increased access to digital technologies influences managers' attention allocation. The primary purpose is to investigate how digital technologies may substitute or complement managers' heuristics. Consequently, this can aid organisations' awareness of the potential impact to effectively adopt specific approaches to improve managers' decision-making and avoid information overload.      Method:   An exploratory, qualitative multiple case study consisting of six interviews was conducted to align with the purpose. The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with managers at several companies within the energy and power industry. The data collection focuses on the three elements digital technologies, heuristics, and the attention-based view, which are then analysed through thematic analysis to identify their influence on one another.      Conclusion:   This study identifies the effect of digital technologies on attention allocation and heuristics. Attention allocation is negatively and positively impacted through digital technologies, allowing managers to, e.g., access an abundance of information which in turn can lead to information overload. Digital technologies additionally have a complementary effect on heuristics, the degree of which differs depending on several factors and situations. A substitutional effect is not as common and appears in combination with process automation.

The need to focus and economize on scarce attention is increasingly being acknowledged within management accounting and control literature. The aim of this study is to investigate how practitioners go about creating new concepts and measurements to induce attention towards new issues and as-pects of strategic importance for the organization. In this case study, we follow a project group in a Swedish municipality, creating a management control model of employee health. A close-up view is provided through a narrative approach, based on filming and participant observation, illustrating the highly situated and contextual character of atten-tion in sensemaking processes. The naming of the concepts of management control was found to be associated with a science-framing, while references to local practices of management control induced practice-framing strongly de-emphasizing characteristic features of management control. Line-managers of the study accepted the framework without demands for indica-tors or predictive models. This outcome is in line with a practice notion of management control and a language-game understanding of human communication: management control systems are part of the practices defining meaning and directing at-tention towards different aspects of any situation. Rather than being a lan-guage, management control concepts and measurement may not provide much more than the phonetics of business. Consequently, it may be ques-tioned whether what gets measured automatically gets managed. In line with the attention-based view of the firm and a practice notion of management control, this study suggests that new attention is created through the naming and framing of management control ideals, and as a result of the expressions of managerial intent through practices.