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© 1995 Oxford University Press

research-article

Hierarchical Selection and Organizational Adaptation

MASSIMO WARGLIEN

(Dipartimento di economia e direzione aziendale, Università di Venezia Venezia, Italia. warglien{at}unive.it)

Abstract

The paper portrays the firm as a hierarchy of processes, exploring how interactions among nested dynamics shape the evolution of organizations. A computer model of intraorganizational evolution shows how interactions among different process levels within the firm lead to the emergence of an ‘adaptation style’, by dynamically tuning explorations efforts and exploitation opportunities. In complex environments, this results in waveform processes of discovery and learning, which may be subject to competence and memory traps. The model analyzes interactions between innovation and diffusion of organizational competences, showing how different strategies of competence replication arise along innovation cycles. Furthermore, the paper suggests how the model can be operationalized, singling out organizations' ‘traits’ and tracking their diffusion and modification over time.


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