27/09/2021

People Leadership and Organization

Dr Maurizio Sibilla

Cognitive Mapping Technique

Introduction

People Leadership and Organization

What is a CMT?

Cognitive Mapping Technique (CMT)

is a tool which allows us to:

-answer a focus question and articulate a

meaningful discourse regarding a topic of
interest

- to visualize and share pieces of knowledge

(i.e. take into account different perspectives)

- to integrate user’s prior knowledge with

new information
-(i.e. self-evaluation of your knowledge about a
topic

- to organize and connect relevant

information, moving from simple and complex
models and vice versa
Sibilla & Kurul, 2020.

People Leadership and Organization

What are the main features of a CMT?

•FOCUS QUESTION

•HIERACHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF CONCEPTS

(from generic concepts to detailed ones)

•LINKING PHRASES
(each concept must be connected with another in
order to form a sentence)

•CROSSLINKING PHRASES
•(you can connect concepts that are not in sequence)

Sibilla & Kurul, 2016.

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People Leadership and Organization

An example. Focus question: what are the emerging concepts related to Low Carbon Transition?

Concept: Please, don’t use verbs or sentences as concepts. 
Don’t repeat the same concept into the map. 

Linking 
phrase: use 
the linking 
phrase to give 
a sense (i.e. 
contextualise) 
Sibilla & Kurul, 2018.
you concepts

People Leadership and Organization

Features of a good cognitive map

•It starts from a clear FOCUS QUESTION

•It presents a SPECIFIC POINT OF VIEW

•It establishes an HIERARCHICAL ORDER among the concepts

•It is composed of 15-25 CONCEPTS, and each of them is connected in

order to produce a discourse.

•It must not shows all your knowledge

A free software to develop cognitive maps:

‐Cmap | CmapTools (ihmc.us)