Strategy as a matter of beliefs: the recorded music industry reinventing itself by rethinking itself

Managerial and organizational cognition studies the ways cognitions of managers in groups, organizations and industries shape their strategies and actions. Cognitions refer to simplified representations of managers’ internal and external environments, necessary to cope with the rich, ambiguous information requirements that characterize strategy making. Despite the important achievements in the field, many unresolved puzzles remain as to this process, particular as to the cognitive factors that condition actors in framing a response to a discontinuity, how actors can change their models in the face of a discontinuity, and the reciprocal relation between cognition and action. I leverage on the recent case of the recorded music industry in the face of the digital technology to study these issues, through a strategy-oriented study of the way early response to the discontinuity was constructed and of the subsequent evolution of this response. Through a longitudinal historical and cognitive analysis of actions and cognitions at both the industry and firm-level during the period in which the response took place (1999-2010), I gain important insights on the way historical beliefs in the industry shaped early response to the digital disruption, on the role of outsiders in promoting change through renewed vision about important issues, and on the reciprocal relationship between cognitive and strategic change.

Cheering the soul: Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk’s Mufarriḥ an-Nafs. Arabic edition, english translation, study and glossaries

The Mufarriḥ an-nafs (Soul-Cheerer), attributed to Badr ad-Dīn Muẓaffar Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk, who served under the Ayyubids as the Chief Medical Officer of Damascus in the mid-13th century, was written as a comprehensive guide for physicians outlining different approaches to cheering the soul. The tractate is divided into ten chapters, which explore the nature of the soul, its distinction to the body as well as their connection through sensorial perception. Ibn Qāḍī Baʿlabakk distinguishes the bodily senses – hearing, vision, smell, taste, touch – and the inner senses, which he sees as stimulated through activities such as hunting and engagement in poetry and the sciences. The seventh chapter of the Mufarriḥ an-nafs includes an extended encyclopedia on materia medica as well as dispensatory of simple and compound drugs, which is devoted to treating the soul and remains unparalleled in the history of Islamicate medicine. My doctoral dissertation offers a complete recension and translation of the Mufarriḥ an-nafs based on a stemma codicum drawn from the seventeen extant text witnesses. The dissertation contextualizes the work, its author as well as sources, and features a text commentary that seeks to enable the reader to easily place and understand the Mufarriḥ an-nafs within the tradition of Galenic medicine. The glossaries on materia medica found at the end of the dissertation are aimed at facilitating access to the pharmacological dispensatory included in the seventh chapter.