2006/10 | LEM Working Paper Series | |
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Modeling Routines and Organizational Learning. A Discussion of the State-of-the-Art | ||
Giovanni Dosi, Marco Faillo, Luigi Marengo |
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Keywords | ||
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Division of labor, Mental models, Problem-solving, Problem decomposition.
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Abstract | ||
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This paper presents a critical overview of some recent attempts at building formal
models of organizations as information-processing and problem-solving
entities.
We distinguish between two classes of models according to the different objects of
analysis. The first class includes models mainly addressing information processing and
learning and analyzes the relations between the structure of information flows, learning
patterns, and organizational performances. The second class
focuses on the relationship between the division of cognitive labor and search
processes in some problem-solving space, addressing more directly the notion of
organizations as repositories of problem-solving knowledge. Here the objects of analysis are the
problem-solving procedures which the organization embodies.
The results begin to highlight important comparative properties regarding the impact on
problem-solving efficiency and learning of different forms of hierarchical governance,
the dangers of lock-in associated with specific forms of adaptive learning, the relative
role of “online” vs. “offline” learning, the impact of the “cognitive maps” which
organizations embody, the possible trade-offs between accuracy and speed of
convergence associated with different “decomposition schemes”.
We argue that these are important formal tools towards the development of a
comparative institutional analysis addressing the distinct properties of different forms
of organization and accumulation of knowledge.
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