Organizational Adaptation: The Use of Simulated Annealing to Study Organizational Adaptation

全球竞争和快速变化的技术使我们了解组织如何适应不断变化的环境，从而保持或改善其业绩，这一点至关重要。组织通过重新设计(缩小规模、扩大规模或重新设计各种任务)来应对环境。此外，组织经常应对变化，例如通过在组织之间流动来追求职业生涯的熟练工人员。组织适应可能对组织生产力有很大贡献，就像个人学习有助于个人生产力一样。然而，人们对组织适应知之甚少，尤其是在个人本身正在学习的情况下，这种适应是否在理论上具有提高绩效的可能性。将制定一个关于组织适应和业绩的理论的计算框架，并用它来探讨适应导致业绩改进的条件。该框架采用模拟退火法在固定和不稳定的环境中寻找最优组织结构。将审查组织适应的影响，特别是当人员是临时工时。需要解决的问题包括：哪些适应战略最有效？哪些类型的组织表现出色，特别是当人员都是熟练工时？组织之间的人员流动所发生的技术转移是否会导致组织绩效的提高？

Global competition and rapidly changing technology make it critical that we understand how organizations can adapt to a changing environment so that they can maintain or improve their performance. Organizations respond to the environment through redesign (downsizing, upsizing, or re-engineering various tasks). Further, organizations frequently cope with changes such as journeymen personnel who pursue their careers by moving among organizations. Organizational adaptation presumably contributes greatly to organizational productivity, even as individual learning contributes to personal productivity. However, little is known about organizational adaptation, and particularly about whether such adaptation even has the theoretical possibility of improving performance given that individuals are themselves learning. A computational framework for theorizing about organizational adaptation and performance will be developed and used to explore the conditions under which adaptation leads to performance improvements. This framework employs simulated annealing algorithms for locating optimal organizational structures in fixed and volatile environments. The effect of organizational adaptation, particularly when personnel are journeymen will be examined. Questions to be addressed include: What adaptation strategies are most effective? What types of organizations emerge as high performers, particular when personnel are journeymen? Does the technology transfer that occurs when personnel journey among organizations lead to organizational performance improvements?