Interdependence and adaptability: Organizational learning and the long-term effect of integration

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sorenson, O
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.49.4.446.14418
• 发表日期: 2003
• 页码: 446-463
• 关键词: Vertical Integration; organizational failure; ORGANIZATIONAL GROWTH; computer workstations

摘要

A growing body of research documents the role that organizational learning plays in improving firm performance over time. To date, however, this literature has given limited attention to the effect that the internal structure of the firm c an have on generating differences in these learning rates. This paper focuses on the degree to which interdependence-and in particular one structural characteristic that generates interdependence, vertical integration-affects organizational learning. Firms face a trade-off. In stable environments, vertically integrating severely limits the organization's ability to learn by doing because boundedly rational managers find the optimization of operations difficult when making highly interdependent choices. As the volatility of the environment increases though, integration can facilitate learning-by-doing by buffering activities within the firm from instability in the external environment. Thus, firms with a high degree of interdependence suffer less in these environments. Tests of these hypotheses on the growth and exit rates of computer workstation. manufacturers support this thesis.