Balancing exploration and exploitation in bottom-up organizational learning contexts
In order to keep pace with a rapidly changing environment, organizations must navigate a fundamental tension between exploration and exploitation. Over time, organizations often drift toward exploitation of known strengths and established resources, but this tendency can be harmful in a dynamic and competitive landscape. A classic simulation by James March (1991) demonstrated the importance of maintaining some degree of belief heterogeneity in an organization for the sake of long-term learning. In March’s lineage, this thesis examines the effects of various exploratory strategies (i.e., individual experimentation, codification frequency, structural modularity, and employee turnover) on organizational learning in a bottom-up, networked, interpersonal learning context. Results demonstrate the complex interdependency of these variables in the exploration/exploitation tradeoff. Exploratory analyses suggest that a small degree of random individual experimentation has a favorable reward-to-risk ratio and that it is preferable to turnover as an exploratory strategy.
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- In Collections
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Electronic Theses & Dissertations
- Copyright Status
- Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
- Material Type
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Theses
- Authors
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Walker, Ross Ian
- Thesis Advisors
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DeShon, Richard P.
- Committee Members
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Kozlowski, Steve WJ
Ford, John K.
- Date
- 2018
- Program of Study
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Psychology - Master of Arts
- Degree Level
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Masters
- Language
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English
- Pages
- vii, 76 pages
- ISBN
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9780355939514
0355939517
- Permalink
- https://doi.org/doi:10.25335/8npn-ff46