Organisational Cognitive Neuroscience

Purpose: To highlight the potential implications and non-implications for leadership and organization development of a recent systematic review of empirical developments in organizational cognitive neuroscience (OCN).
Design/methodology/approach: Butler et al.’s (2015) systematic review of forty empirical articles related to OCN is re-interpreted in terms of its potential to reveal (non-) implications for practice. OCN is critically discussed, then related to the research findings from studies with two methodological designs.
Findings: At this stage of OCN’s emergence, it appears that neuroimaging and physiology-based research methods have equal potential in their implications for practice, though hormonal data poses ethical public interest dilemmas. Both methods cannot be reduced to specific forms of application to practice, but they set an aspirational direction for the future development of leadership and organizations.
Practical implications: There appear to be two paces of translational activity – practitioners are moving more quickly than academics in applying OCN to practice. It is suggested that a meeting of minds may be needed to ensure that any risks associated with applying OCN to practice are minimised or eliminated.
Social implications: Inter-disciplinary research, like OCN, requires a social consensus about how basic research in cognitive neuroscience can be applied to organizations. A think tank will provide opportunities for deeper engagement and co-production between academics and practitioners.

This paper outlines the strategic alignment of modes of emotional and psychological governance characteristic of ‘brain culture’ with intensified forms of workplace performance management within specifically neoliberal organisational cultures. We introduce the recent emergence of positive psychology-based workplace training programmes in the UK human resources field as a new empirical site for the study of cultural geographies of education.  Such programmes promote a culture of optimism and optimal functioning, focussing on the cultivation of positive emotions amongst individual workers and in workplace cultures. This emphasis on wellbeing sits somewhat uncomfortably in the context of the global financial crisis, the UK’s recent recession and the diminishing role of the UK state in the provision of welfare, but is wholly concurrent  with the neoliberal promotion of ‘lifelong learning’ and the spread of individualised practices of performance management in UK workplaces.  The paper draws on in-depth interviews with trainers and practitioners who variously use positive psychology, mindfulness training and strengths-based competencies in workplaces in the UK, and outlines their connection to the development of positive psychology as a new academic discipline in the USA.  In outlining the importance of context for understanding changing workplace cultures and worker subjectivities, a cultural geography analysis of rapid advancements in psychological knowledge provides a useful new perspective on the links between neoliberalism, the behaviour change and happiness 'industries'and brain culture.