Adaptive coordination of a learning team
Management Science
Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining, and Transferring Knowledge
Organizational Learning: Creating, Retaining, and Transferring Knowledge
Imitation of Complex Strategies
Management Science
A paradigmatic and methodological examination of knowledge management research: 2000 to 2004
Decision Support Systems
Elucidating strategic network dynamics through computational modeling
Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory
Management Science
Modularity and incremental innovation: the roles of design rules and organizational communication
Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory
Information, Technology, and Information Worker Productivity
Information Systems Research
Single machine scheduling with autonomous learning and induced learning
Computers and Industrial Engineering
Hi-index | 0.01 |
A growing body of research documents the role that organizational learning plays in improving firm performance over time. To date, however, this literature has given limited attention to the effect that the internal structure of the firm can have on generating differences in these learning rates. This paper focuses on the degree to which interdependence--and in particular one structural characteristic that generates interdependence, vertical integration--affects organizational learning. Firms face a trade-off. In stable environments, vertically integrating severely limits the organization's ability to learn by doing because boundedly rational managers find the optimization of operations difficult when making highly interdependent choices. As the volatility of the environment increases though, integration can facilitate learning-by-doing by buffering activities within the firm from instability in the external environment. Thus, firms with a high degree of interdependence suffer less in these environments. Tests of these hypotheses on the growth and exit rates of computer workstation manufacturers support this thesis.