Organizational research has long suggested that when working with problems that are complex and ill-defined it is imperative for organizational members to understand and represent these problems in order to effectively address them. However, research on the topic has remained fragmented across different organizational literatures resulting in the development and persistence of ambiguities in our understanding of the activities that compose the process of developing problem representations, the temporal patterns through which they unfold, and the associated mechanisms and outcomes. In this paper, we review and synthesize research across seven different literatures—all of which examine different organizational contexts that involve complex and ill-defined problems—and offer a framework that integrates research across these different literatures. Our framework delineates the different activities constituting the process of developing problem representations, provides insights about different approaches to developing problem representations, elaborates our understanding of the mechanisms associated with the process, and broadens our understanding of the different outcomes of the process. In so doing, our review and framework not only offer clarity and coherence on the topic but also highlight new opportunities for theoretical and methodological advancements.

中文翻译：

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在组织中发展问题表示：跨文献综合和整合框架


组织研究长期以来一直表明，在处理复杂且定义不清的问题时，组织成员必须理解和表示这些问题，以便有效地解决这些问题。然而，关于该主题的研究在不同的组织文献中仍然分散，导致我们对构成问题表示过程的活动、它们展开的时间模式以及相关机制和结果的理解中存在歧义和持续存在。在本文中，我们回顾和综合了七种不同文献的研究——所有这些文献都研究了涉及复杂和定义不清的问题的不同组织环境——并提供了一个整合这些不同文献研究的框架。我们的框架描述了构成开发问题表示过程的不同活动，提供了有关开发问题表示的不同方法的见解，详细阐述了我们对与过程相关的机制的理解，并拓宽了我们对过程不同结果的理解。在此过程中，我们的综述和框架不仅为该主题提供了清晰度和连贯性，而且还突出了理论和方法论进步的新机会。