Multilevel Organizational Adaptation: Scale Invariance in the Scottish Healthcare System

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dattee, Brice; Barlow, James
• 署名单位: emlyon business school; Imperial College London
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2017.1113
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 301-319
• 关键词: multilevel; ORGANIZATIONAL ADAPTATION; COGNITIVE REPRESENTATIONS; coupled learning; collaboration; complexity; scale invariance; Healthcare

摘要

We use the case of a whole-system change program in a national healthcare system to empirically examine the multilevel dynamics underlying organizational adaptation. Our analysis demonstrates how the cognitive distance between agents' causal representations affects opportunities to cooperate in hierarchical systems. Using complexity theory, we identify a scale-invariant causal pathway that can be applied recursively across many organizational levels. At each level, three coupled feedback loops determine how local agents modify their cognitive representations to include uncovered interdependencies and synchronize their adaptive search across organizational boundaries: a boundary work loop, a small wins loop, and a parochialism loop. Our results also point to the scale-dependency of the strength of dissipative processes across levels. These novel results further develop the theory of organizational change and have practical implications for large multilevel organizations, especially regarding the sustainability of improvements.