In the aspiration adaptation process, managers have to navigate the spectrum of narrowly focusing attention to the most relevant reference point(s) or distributing attention broadly across all reference points. Yet, little is known about how they distribute their attention in this process. We examine how managers distribute their attention when market uncertainty increases, and attention allocation becomes cognitively taxing. We test our hypotheses in the German cooperative banking group observing 354 banks (2014-2018). We find that managers broaden their attention scope when market uncertainty increases and narrow their attention when it surpasses a moderate level. Finally, we find that board size moderates this relationship. We contribute to the Behavioral Theory of the Firm by introducing the attention scope as a new conceptualization of attention distribution.
