Collaborative Research: Policy Evolution within an Organization

在国家科学基金会创新和组织变革计划的支持下，本研究重点关注组织学习，使用进化模型为管理者提供一套规则或指导方针，使他们的公司和组织能够更快地向理想的方向发展。 这些规则可能涉及适当数量的业务部门、晋升政策或基于团队的决策，以及其他组织特征，并适用于从企业到学校和大学的一系列组织。 决策规则产生一系列持续的决策，这些决策指导活动，并在某种意义上确定组织的身份。这项工作包括理解抽象的进化机制是如何（或可以）实际上体现在组织和管理者塑造研究人员将进行进化审计，收集数据的几个合作伙伴公司和当地学校的进化潜力进化审计将有助于组织进化的计算机模拟模型的发展。收集的数据和建立的模型将为深入探索管理者如何创建一个能够朝着他们期望的方向快速发展的组织奠定基础。合作伙伴包括普华永道、亚瑟安德森、普格罗伯茨联合公司、伊士曼化学公司、通用汽车公司和罗得岛的普罗维登斯。这项研究的结果将提供一套准则，使各组织能够更迅速地朝着理想的方向发展。

With support from the National Science Foundation's Innovation and Organizational Change Program, this research focuses on organizational learning using an evolutionary model to provide managers with a set of rules or guidelines that will permit their companies and organizations to evolve more rapidly in desirable directions. These rules might deal with the appropriate number of business units, promotion policies, or team-based decision making, among other organizational characteristics, and apply in a range of organizations from business to schools and universities.The researchers see a useful analogy between genes and decision rules. A decision rule produces a continuing stream of decisions that direct activity and in some sense determine the identity of an organization. This work involves understanding how abstract evolutionary mechanisms are (or can be) actually embodied in organizations and shaped by managersThe researchers will perform evolutionary audits to collect data on the evolutionary potential of several partner companies and a local school The evolutionary audits will aid in the development of a computer simulation model of organizational evolution. The data collected and the model built will form a foundation for in-depth explorations of how managers can create an organization that will evolve quickly in the direction they desire. Partners including Price Waterhouse Coopers, Arthur Andersen, Pugh Roberts Associates, Eastman Chemicals, General Motors and in Providence, Rhode Island. The results of this study would provide a set of guidelines that will permit organizations to evolve more rapidly in desirable directions.