The DOI matches its Crossref record; 12 of the 12 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Balancing Exploration and Exploitation Through Structural Design: The Isolation of Subgroups and Organizational Learning
Abstract
The classic trade-off between exploration and exploitation in organizational learning has attracted vigorous attention by researchers over the last two decades. Despite this attention, however, the question of how firms can better maintain the balance of exploration and exploitation remains unresolved. Drawing on a wide range of research on population and organization structure, we argue that an organization divided into semi-isolated subgroups may help strike this balance. We simulate such an organization, systematically varying the interaction pattern between individuals to explore how the degree of subgroup isolation and intergroup connectivity influences organizational learning. We also test this model with a range of contingency variables highlighted in the management research. We find that moderate levels of cross-group linking lead to the highest equilibrium performance by enabling superior ideas to diffuse across groups without reducing organizational diversity too quickly. This finding is remarkably resilient to a wide range of variance in factors such as problem complexity, environmental dynamism, and personnel turnover.
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Cites
Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning
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“Furthermore, consistent with March (1991), we find that the average outcomes of learning decrease with these higher values of learning rates.”
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Organizational learning: The contributing processes and the literatures
Huber, G. P. (1991) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.2.1.88 · Cited by 8,072
The Search-Transfer Problem: The Role of Weak Ties in Sharing Knowledge across Organization Subunits
Hansen, M. T. (1999) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2307/2667032 · Cited by 5,809
Holland, J. H. (1992) · Scientific American · doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0792-66 · Cited by 5,764
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Collaboration and Creativity: The Small World Problem
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Technology as a complex adaptive system: evidence from patent data
Fleming, L., & Sorenson, O. (2001) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/s0048-7333(00)00135-9 · Cited by 1,315
Siggelkow, N., & Levinthal, D. A. (2003) · Organization Science · doi:10.1287/orsc.14.6.650.24870 · Cited by 953
Optimal structure, market dynamism, and the strategy of simple rules
Davis, J. P., Eisenhardt, K. M., & Bingham, C. B. (2009) · Administrative Science Quarterly · doi:10.2189/asqu.2009.54.3.413 · Cited by 804
Cited by
Institutional Complexity and Organizational Responses
Greenwood, R., Raynard, M., Kodeih, F., Micelotta, E. R., & Lounsbury, M. (2011) · Academy of Management Annals · doi:10.5465/19416520.2011.590299 · Cited by 3,519
Organizational Ambidexterity: Past, Present, and Future
O'Reilly, C. A., & Tushman, M. L. (2013) · Academy of Management Perspectives · doi:10.5465/amp.2013.0025 · Cited by 2,580
Amabile, T. M., & Pratt, M. G. (2016) · Research in Organizational Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.riob.2016.10.001 · Cited by 1,863
Carnabuci, G., & Operti, E. (2013) · Strategic Management Journal · doi:10.1002/smj.2084 · Cited by 596
Learning in the Twenty-First-Century Workplace
Noe, R. A., Clarke, A. D. M., & Klein, H. J. (2014) · Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior · doi:10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413-091321 · Cited by 539
Metadata
- Authors
- Fang, C., Lee, J., & Schilling, M. A.
- Venue
- Organization Science
- Published
- 2010-06
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 625-642
- ISSN
- 1047-7039 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5455
- OpenAlex
- W2166401620
- Cited by
- 596
- References
- 12
- FWCI
- 52.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- Fang, C., Lee, J., & Schilling, M. A. (2010). Balancing Exploration and Exploitation Through Structural Design: The Isolation of Subgroups and Organizational Learning. Organization Science. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1090.0468
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
