The network dynamics of attention in organizations: Mechanisms, models and empirical results

We propose a mechanism-based theory of attention that explains how the structure of organizational attention networks emerges from time ordered sequences of interdependent acts of attention allocation. The theory posits that the observable structure of attention networks is produced and reproduced by four endogenous micro-relational mechanisms regulating how organizational participants allocate their attention to problems: attention focusing; attention reinforcing; attention mixing, and attention clustering. We propose a model where these mechanisms concatenate to give rise to a fluid attention network that changes in continuous time as participants join and leave the organizational arena, and problems emerge, disappear, and reappear. Our analysis of attention allocation in a large open source software project finds evidence that the mechanisms postulated by the theory are consistent with the evolutionary dynamics of the of the attention network actually observed throughout the complete life history of the project. Accounting for individual characteristics of problems, individual differences among participants, and for the formal organizational structure of the project does not affect the core results of the analysis. The study contributes to a new theoretical understanding of organizing as a process structured by temporal, rather than intentional, or consequential mechanisms connecting problems to carriers of potential solutions.