Collaborative Research: Policy Evolution within an Organization

在美国国家科学基金会创新和组织变革项目的支持下，本研究将重点放在组织学习上，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朝着理想的方向更快地发展。这些规则可能处理适当数量的业务单位、促销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各种组织。研究人员在基因和决策规则之间发现了一个有用的类比。决策规则产生连续的决策流，这些决策流指导活动，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）实际体现在组织中，并由管理者塑造。研究人员将进行进化审计，以收集几家合作公司和一所当地学校的进化潜力数据。进化审计将有助于开发组织进化的计算机模拟模型。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将朝着他们希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、安达信、普格罗伯茨、伊士曼化学、通用汽车和罗德岛普罗维登斯。这项研究的结果将提供一套指导方针，使组织能够在理想的方向上更快地发展。

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.