Abstract
This study explores in detail about the relationship between attention on managerial issues and organizational inertia. Past research shows that rigid cognition make managers focus on specific issues and dispose of others, and such managers’attentional focus prevent strategy change. In this study we introduce the idea from attention based-view that issues are not fixed in managers’ attention but they are moving between inside and outside of attention. Analyzing the case of Sharp Corporation with this viewpoint, we find that top managers frequently changed the issues and their answers except for their central issue: Possession of LCD panel production. Issues like final product business strategy or alliance policy were used flexibly for maintaining or justifying the LCD panel production, and it disguised the critical inadequacy of excess LCD panel facilities. From this case, we inductively get some new propositions that flexible change of issue rather prevents changing strategies, if managers’ cognition is rigid.
