Industrial and Corporate Change, Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 789-813
© 2003 Oxford University Press
Experience and convergence: curiosities and speculation
A. S. Miner, Graduate School of Business, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 975 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Email: aminer{at}bus.wisc.edu.
P. R. Haunschild, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, CBA 4.202/B6300, Austin, TX 78712-0210, USA. Email: Pamela.haunschild{at}bus.utexas.edu.
A. Schwab, E. J. Ourso College of Business, Louisiana State University, 3152B CEBA Building, Baton Rouge, LA 70803-6312, USA. Email: aschwa3{at}lsu.edu.
Abstract
Many theoretical frameworks assume that increasing organizational experience will produce convergence in problems, outcomes and activities. In this paper, we present three curiosities from field research in which increasing experience apparently generated more, not less, variability. We suggest that under plausible and even mundane conditions, experience can systematically generate variability. We describe three specific situations: (i) the interaction of experience with higher level rules; (ii) experience in novelty-rewarding or top-score-only competitive systems; and (iii) experience involving repeated vicarious learning. We explore processes that may generate variability in these contexts, and factors that may shape whether experience will generate convergence or variability over time.
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