A Cognitive Approach to International Organization: Perspective and Application
Author(s)
Shih, Chih-Yu
Abstract
Some social psychology literature has suggested that social organization exists in time, not in space. Organization as a living system would not evolve over time, however, unless a meaningful identity had been given to it by interacting members. This view of social organization can be applied to organizations at all levels. This article deals with the search for identity at the individual and the international levels. International organization can be seen as processes of seeking common cause-maps by interacting national leaders. The function of organization is to develop a consistent, self-binding, and shared interpretation of world events by the interacting national representatives serving as information ingestors, distributors, and receivers. This organizational process would congeal the evolution of a supranational living system if congruence among various national role conceptions were to be greatly enhanced through negotiation. The paper discusses the implications of two kinds of national role conceptions to conflict resolution. At the end, the cognitive approach is applied to East Asia to illustrate its analytical utility.
