Looking forward and looking backward: Cognitive and experiential search

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Gavetti, G; Levinthal, D
• 署名单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 刊物名称: ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0001-8392
• DOI: 10.2307/2666981
• 发表日期: 2000
• 页码: 113-137
• 关键词: ORGANIZATIONAL-CHANGE; management; strategy; industry; performance; ECONOMICS

摘要

We used computer simulations to examine the role and interrelationship between search processes that are forward-looking, based on actors' cognitive map of action-outcome linkages, and those that are backward-looking, or experience based. Cognition was modeled as a simple, low-dimensional representation of a more complex, higher dimensional fitness landscape. Results show that, although crude, these representations still act as a powerful guide to initial search efforts and usefully constrain the direction of subsequent experiential search. Changing a cognitive representation itself can act as an important mode of adaptation, effectively resulting in the sequential allocation of attention to different facets of the environment. This virtue of shifting cognitive representation, however, may be offset by the loss of tacit knowledge associated with the prior cognition.(.)