Triadic processing and build-up of attentional engagement in emerging strategic initiatives

Journal article

The attention-based view (ABV) posits that strategic actions are shaped by the issues members attend to. Seminal theorizing explains top management’s role in distributing and enacting attention, but we know less about how organizational attention emerges through bottom-up strategic initiatives. Whereas traditional ABV adopts a dyadic approach to attending (attendee and object of attention), we introduce a triadic approach (attendee, co-attendee, and joint object) to explain the build-up of joint attentional engagement in bottom-up strategic initiatives. Drawing on research on social cognition and social agency, we develop a three-fold process model: (1) brokering and rhetorical work as key forms of triadic agency through which individuals initiate and sustain joint attentional engagement, (2) cognitive alignment and shared trust as mechanisms through which a collectively attending entity and collective attention emerge, enabling a jointly attended issue to develop into a strategic initiative, and (3) attracting and engaging broader organizational attention amid competing issues and initiatives, thereby connecting the emergent strategic initiative to the organization’s broader strategic agenda. By theorizing organizational attention as a joint, emergent, and recursive phenomenon, we advance both ABV and strategy process research, thereby offering a microfoundational explanation of how bottom-up initiatives gain traction and enable strategic change.

Authors: Kauppila, O-P; Vaara, E

• Publication status: Accepted
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Academy of Management
• Journal: Academy of Management Review
• Acceptance date: 2026-04-22
• EISSN: 1930-3807
• ISSN: 0363-7425
• Language: English