Lecture: Wed June 14 12:30p, Brian Tivnan: March-ing forward by leaps and boundary spanning

[Stephen Guerin]

TITLE: March-ing forward by leaps and boundary spanning: Coevolutionary
dynamics of the adaptive tension between exploration and exploitation

SPEAKER: Brian F. Tivnan

The MITRE Corporation &
Executive Leadership Doctoral Program
George Washington University

LOCATION: 624 Agua Fria Conference Room
TIME: Wed June 14, 12:30p

Lunch will be available for purchase

ABSTRACT
Recognizing the inherent strengths of simulation-based research, James March
proved to be one of the earliest pioneers of simulation as a methodological
approach in organization science (e.g., Cyert and March's (1963) Duopoly
Model and Cohen, March and Olsen's (1972) Garbage Can Model). March
appreciates that simulation provides the researcher a platform: (a) to
explore the inherent complex dynamics of organizations (Dooley & Van de Ven,
1999; Simon, 1962), (b) to conduct experiments that would typically be
impossible or impractical in the physical world (McKelvey, 1997), and (c) to
study sets of actors who possess an adaptive capacity (Axelrod, 1997) as an
alternative to rational actor assumptions which overlook the boundedly
rational limitations of their actors (Simon, 1976).

Because March's (1991) paper - "Exploration and Exploitation in
Organizational Learning" has emerged as a seminal paper in organization
science, the Organizational Code Model (OCM) represents an ideal candidate
for replication. As with Prietula and Watson's (2000) replication and
extension of the Duopoly Model, the following four points provide support
for replication of the OCM: (a) replication and repeatability represent two
of the hallmarks of simulation as a research methodology, (b) replicating
the OCM in a modern modeling framework (e.g., Repast) and providing it to
the scholarly community in an executable form brings the research to life
through the addition of visualization and user interfaces, and (c) this
additional availability should increase comprehension within the scholarly
community for the OCM dynamics and the robustness of March's findings, and
(d) replication from the model description in the published paper allows for
the establishment of relational equivalence (Axtell, Axelrod, Epstein, &
Cohen, 1996) between the original and replicated models but also highlights
the necessity for additional information on the statistical distributions of
the original results to establish distributional equivalence.

If available in an executable form, the original OCM provides a platform to
conduct additional experiments of seminal concepts in organization science
from March and other theorists. For example, the OCM supports Ashby's (1956)
Law of Requisite Variety when comparing the complexity of the organization
to that of the environment. Furthermore, the original OCM can also be used
to support other March contributions to organizational learning concepts,
namely the respective absorptive capacity (Cohen & Levinthal, 1990) of
competing organizations and the path dependent nature of organizational
learning induced by competency traps (Levitt & March, 1988).

In addition to conducting supplementary experiments with the original OCM, a
replication of the OCM could also facilitate its extension. Some possible
extensions to March's OCM include: (a) boundary spanning organizational
members (Hazy, Tivnan, & Schwandt, 2003; Tushman & Scanlan, 1981) for a
direct interface to the environment and increase member heterogeneity in
lieu of random replacement of members; (b) interactions between
organizational members and boundary spanning members governed by the
emergence of trust (Macy & Skvoretz, 1998); (c) generation of the
competitive context to which March alludes in his closing comments with
multiple instantiations of the OCM as the Organizational components (Tivnan,
Forthcoming); and (d) extension of this competitive context to also consider
collaborative relationships between organizations (Tivnan, 2004).

REFERENCES
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& Hall.
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