Learning to Manage Breadth: Experience as Repetition and Adaptation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dutt, Nilanjana; Lawrence, Megan
• 署名单位: Bocconi University; Vanderbilt University
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2021.1482
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 1300-1318
• 关键词: organizational learning; breadth; experience; operational performance; ORGANIZATIONAL PRACTICES

摘要

We examine how experience-induced adaptations that affect the breadth of an ongoing activity affect performance. The research on organizational learning suggests that accumulating experience, both from repetition and adaptation at the activity level, improves outcomes. Yet, findings on the effects of increasing breadth-the number of different processes making up an activity-are mixed. Greater breadth exposes organizations to diverse activities. It also generates an additional need for coordination that may undermine performance. We examine the joint effect of experience and breadth onwaste reduction for U.S. manufacturing facilities managing their toxic waste from 1991 to 2014. These facilities manage toxic waste on a chemical by chemical basis. We find a detrimental effect of breadth on performance that is highest for facilities with low experience; however, this effect is moderated by experience with the waste management activity. Because most facilities manage toxic waste from several chemicals, we also see spillovers-in terms of both learning benefits and the costs of increasing breadth. When a facility expands waste management breadth anywhere, performance decreases for the focal chemical. Yet, this spillover effect of breadth decreases for activities where the facility has accruedmore experience. Our research clarifies when facilities should consider adding breadth to a routine activity andwhy performance in the proximate periodmay falter as the organization learns and improves in the longer term.