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Georg Von Krogh - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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perspective tacit knowledge and knowledge conversion controversy and advancement in Organizational knowledge creation theory
Organization Science, 2009Co-Authors: Ikujiro Nonaka, Georg Von KroghAbstract:Nonaka's paper [1994. A dynamic theory of Organizational knowledge creation. Organ. Sci.5(1) 14--37] contributed to the concepts of “tacit knowledge” and “knowledge conversion” in Organization Science. We present work that shaped the development of Organizational knowledge creation theory and identify two premises upon which more than 15 years of extensive academic work has been conducted: (1) tacit and explicit knowledge can be conceptually distinguished along a continuum; (2) knowledge conversion explains, theoretically and empirically, the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge. Recently, scholars have raised several issues regarding the understanding of tacit knowledge as well as the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge in the theory. The purpose of this article is to introduce and comment on the debate about Organizational knowledge creation theory. We aim to help scholars make sense of this debate by synthesizing six fundamental questions on Organizational knowledge creation theory. Next, we seek to elaborate and advance the theory by responding to questions and incorporating new research. Finally, we discuss implications of our endeavor for Organization Science.
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open source software and the private collective innovation model issues for Organization Science
2009Co-Authors: Eric Von Hippel, Georg Von KroghAbstract:Currently two models of innovation are prevalent in Organization Science. The "private investment" model assumes returns to the innovator results from private goods and efficient regimes of intellectual property protection. The "collective action" model assumes that under conditions of market failure, innovators collaborate in order to produce a public good. The phenomenon of open source software development shows that users program to solve their own as well as shared technical problems, and freely reveal their innovations without appropriating private returns from selling the software. In this paper we propose that open source software development is an exemplar of a compound model of innovation that contains elements of both the private investment and the collective action models. We describe a new set of research questions this model raises for scholars in Organization Science. We offer some details regarding the types of data available for open source projects in order to ease access for researchers who are unfamiliar with these, and also offer some advice on conducting empirical studies on open source software development processes.
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Open Source Software and the "Private-Collective" Innovation Model: Issues for Organziation Science
MIT Sloan Research Paper No 473909, 2009Co-Authors: Eric Von Hippel, Georg Von KroghAbstract:Currently, two models of innovation are prevalent in Organization Science. The ﾓprivate investmentﾔ model assumes returns to the innovator result from private goods and effi- cient regimes of intellectual property protection. The ﾓcollective actionﾔ model assumes that under conditions of market failure, innovators collaborate in order to produce a public good. The phenomenon of open source software development shows that users program to solve their own as well as shared technical problems, and freely reveal their innovations without appropriating private returns from selling the software. In this paper, we propose that open source software development is an exemplar of a compound ﾓprivate-collectiveﾔ model of innovation that contains elements of both the private investment and the collective action models and can offer society the ﾓbest of both worldsﾔ under many conditions. We describe a new set of research questions this model raises for scholars in Organization Science. We offer some details regarding the types of data available for open source projects in order to ease access for researchers who are unfamiliar with these, and also offer some advice on conducting empirical studies on open source software development processes.
Sarah Kaplan - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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gender and Organization Science introduction to a virtual special issue
Organization Science, 2018Co-Authors: Isabel Fernandezmateo, Sarah KaplanAbstract:Gendered processes and outcomes are pervasive in Organizational life. They shape how individuals perceive their career prospects, which types of opportunities they pursue, how they get work done within Organizations, and how they balance this work with the rest of their life. Organizations themselves also shape and are shaped by gender dynamics, from the ways they design jobs and performance evaluation systems to the assumptions managers make about individuals’ preferences and motivations. This virtual special issue collects together 14 papers published in Organization Science that challenge common understandings about the sources of gender differences in career outcomes, the effects of balancing work–life obligations, and the ways that gender dynamics play out in teams and Organizations. An important insight that emerges from a comparison of these studies is that demand effects are often confused for supply effects. What looks like a supply problem—we think that women choose not to aspire to top positions or to jobs in top paying fields—might actually be a demand problem—Organizations or jobs look unappealing to women because of past histories of not hiring or promoting women into leadership roles or of making work–life balance appear to be impossible. These studies suggest that essentialist explanations that attribute gendered outcomes to inherent characteristics or choices of women might be too simplistic or inaccurate. Instead, future research would benefit from examining the complex interactions between supply-side and demand-side drivers of gender inequality.
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gender and Organization Science introduction to a virtual special issue
Organization Science, 2018Co-Authors: Isabel Fernandezmateo, Sarah KaplanAbstract:Gendered processes and outcomes are pervasive in Organizational life. They shape how individuals perceive their career prospects, which types of opportunities they pursue, how they get work done wi...
Kathleen M Carley - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Computational Organizational Science and Organizational engineering
Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory, 2002Co-Authors: Kathleen M CarleyAbstract:Abstract The past decade has witnessed the emergence of a new scientific discipline––computational social and Organizational Science. Within Organization Science in particular, and social Science more generally, scientists and practitioners are turning to computational analysis to address fundamental socio-technical problems that are so complex and dynamic that they cannot be fully addressed by traditional techniques. Consequently, there is an explosion of computational models, computationally generated findings, interest in doing simulation, and a dearth of support for this enterprise. This paper contains discussions of the underlying fundamental perspective, the relation of models to empirical data and characteristics of necessary infrastructure.
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computational Organization Science a new frontier
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2002Co-Authors: Kathleen M CarleyAbstract:Synthetic adaptation is the process whereby any entity composed of intelligent, adaptive, and computational agents is also an intelligent, adaptive, and computational agent. Because of synthetic adaptation, Organizations, like the agents of which they are composed, are inherently computational. We can gain insight into the behavior of groups, Organizations, and societies by using multiagent computational models composed of collections of intelligent adaptive artificial agents. CONSTRUCT-O and ORGAHEAD are examples of such models whose value for social, Organizational, and policy analysis lies in the fact that they combine a network (social and knowledge approach) with a multiagent approach to effect more realistic behavior. The results from a series of virtual experiments using these models are examined to illustrate the power of this approach for social, Organizational, and policy analysis.
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introduction to the special issue applications of complexity theory to Organization Science
Organization Science, 1999Co-Authors: P W Anderson, Alan D. Meyer, Kathleen M Eisenhardt, Kathleen M Carley, Andrew PettigrewAbstract:In crafting the call for papers for this special issue of Organization Science, the appointed editors wrote: Organizational scholars seldom come to grips with nonlinear phenomena. Instead, we tend to model phenomena as if they were linear in order to make them tractable, and we tend to model aggregate behavior as if it is produced by individual entities which all exhibit average behavior... a different view of complexity is emerging that may have important implications for Organizational scholarship. Within the past decade, interest in the "Sciences of complexity" has increased dramatically. The study of complex system dynamics has perhaps progressed furthest in the natural Sciences, but it is also beginning to penetrate the social Sciences. This interdisciplinary field of study is still pre-paradigmatic, and it embraces a wide variety of approaches. Although it is not yet clear whether a genuine Science of complexity will emerge, it does seem clear that scholars in a variety of fields are viewing complexity in a different way than Organizational scholars traditionally have. At this juncture, Organizational researchers have few templates that suggest to them how to hypothesize about or model such behavior. It is difficult to know how to draw a conceptual model and how to report the results of empirical inquiries into complex Organizational phenomena. The special issue aims to provide scholars with useful templates to follow when analyzing complex processes that involve Organizations.
Bill Mckelvey - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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quasi natural Organization Science
2016Co-Authors: Bill MckelveyAbstract:Positing that Organizational phenomena result from both individual human intentionality and natural causes independent of individuals' intended behavior, the need for a quasinatural Organization Science is identified. The paradigm war is defined in terms of positivism and postpositivism, with the suggestion that a more relevant epistemology might be scientific realism. The current unconstructive paradigm proliferation is seen as resulting from an underlying cause, idiosyncratic Organizational microstates, phenomena identified by postmodernists. The article develops quasi-natural Organization Science as an antidote to multiparadigmaticism by recognizing that mathematically, computationally, and experimentally intense twentieth century natural Sciences all have microstate idiosyncrasy assumptions similar to those postmodernists suggest are true of Organizational phenomena. By framing a quasi-natural Organization Science focusing on microstates, my intent is not to deny the relevance of either intentionality and subjectivity or natural Science and objectivity. The article attacks the microstate idiosyncrasy problem on four frontiers: microand macroevolutionary theory, semantic conception epistemology, analytical mechanics, and complexity theory. The first frontier develops the natural side of quasi-natural Organization Science to explain natural pattern or order. This "order" arguably results from multilevel coevolutionary behavior in a selectionist competitive context in the form of multi-level selectionist effects. The second frontier reviews the historic role of idealized models, as understood by historical realists and the "semantic conception of theories"-idealized constructs such as point masses or the rational actor assumption-that currently successful Sciences, such as physics and economics, drew upon early in their life-cycles to sidestep the idiosyncrasy problem. Organization scientists are encouraged to develop theories in terms of idealized models. The third frontier attends to the role of 'instrumental conveniences' as essential constructs in the early life-cycle stages of Sciences and the importance of studying rates. For example, a construct such as a pressure vessel acts as a container translating idiosyncratic gas particle movements into a directed pressure stream where particles emerge at some rate. Drawing on Sommerhoffs "directive correlation" concept as an analogous "container" in firms, this section argues that such containers can be used in Organizational analysis to translate idiosyncratic microstates into probabilistic rates of occurrence, thereby allowing the use of intrafirm rate models and Hempel's deductive-statistical model of explanation. An example is given showing how human resource variables can be translated into rate concepts and then used in the context of the directive correlation and the deductive statistical model. The fourth frontier draws on complexity theory as a computational/analytical approach that directly incorporates idiosyncrasy by use of dynamical (nonlinear) methods. Complex adaptive systems, kinds of complexity, the causal role of complexity, and levels of adaptive tension likely to foster self-Organization are discussed. An example shows how a complexity theory approach differs from a conventional explanation of why participative management decision making styles have failed to proliferate. The combined effect of rate dynamics, statistical mechanics, and dynamical analysis lays the platform for a realist, predictive, and generalizable quasi-natural Organization Science, thereby offering a possible resolution of the paradigm war. The mitigation of idiosyncrasy effects allows a reemphasis of background laws in Organization Science, as opposed to the further emphasis of contingent details advocated by postmodernists. (Multiparadigmaticism; Microstates; Epistemology; Coevolutionary Theory; Directive Correlation; Rate Dynamics; Complexity Theory)
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Toward a Campbellian Realist Organization Science
2002Co-Authors: Bill MckelveyAbstract:Campbell’s search for resolution drove him to become a “critical, hypothetical, corrigible scientific realist” (1988b, p. 444−445). And as he himself admitted many times and as his work suggests so clearly, he also became an avowed evolutionary epistemologist. Scientific realism resolved the first dilemma. Evolutionary epistemology abrogated the third one and Campbell’s later conflation of evolutionary epistemology with hermeneutics nullified the fourth. In all of his writing, however, Campbell seems not have returned to the second one. One purpose of this chapter is to resolve the second dilemma. Assuming Campbell’s dilemmas are resolved and his epistemology at least preliminarily completed—realizing that no epistemology is ever finished—Campbell offers a useful message for Organization Science. His Campbellian realism provides the foundation for an objective Organization Science that does not deny the epistemological dynamics uncovered by historical relativists such as Hanson (1958), Kuhn (1962), and Feyerabend (1975) nor the sociology of knowledge developed by interpretists and social constructionists (Bloor 1976, Burrell and Morgan 1979, Brannigan, 1981, Shapin and Schaffer 1985, Latour and Woolgar 1986, Nickles 1989). Campbell’s epistemology and the broader scientific realist and evolutionary epistemologies upon which he draws suggest that the current paradigm war between Organizational positivists (Pfeffer 1982, 1993, 1995; Donaldson 1985, 1996, Bacharach 1989), and relativists (Lincoln 1985, Lincoln and Guba 1985, Reed and Hughes 1992, Perrow, 1994, Van Maanen 1995a,b, Alvesson and Deetz 1996, Burrell 1996, Chia 1996) is philosophically uninformed, archaic, and dysfunctional. Does it matter that Organization scientists are philosophically archaic? Indeed it does. Pfeffer (1993) presents data showing that multiparadigm disciplines are given low status in the broader scientific community, with a variety of negative consequences. Donaldson (1995) counts fifteen paradigms already and Prahalad and Hamel (1994) call for even more, as do Clegg, Hardy, and Nord (1996). As Campbell (1995) notes, the physical and biological Sciences are held in high esteem because they hold to the goal of objectivity in Science—the use of an objective external reality serves as the ultimate criterion variable for winnowing out inferior theories and paradigms. Relativist programs, on the other hand, in principle tolerate as many paradigms as there are socially constructed perspectives and interpretations. Hughes (1992, p. 297) says, “The naivety of reasoned certainties and reified objectivity, upon which Organization theory built its positivist monuments to modernism, is unceremoniously jettisoned...[and] these articles of faith are unlikely to form the axioms of any rethinking or new theoretical directions....” If he is correct Organization Science is destined to proliferate even more paradigms and sink to even lower status—surely an unattractive outcome. Campbellian realism provides a way out of this downward spiral. A dynamic objectivist Organization Science that does not deny a social constructionist sociology of knowledge is possible. Surely this is a message that would delight many Organization scientists. Campbell’s intense interest in scientific realism and evolutionary epistemology makes little sense absent a realization that he was well aware that philosophers had abandoned both the Received View and historical relativism by 1970. The epitaph appeared as Suppe’s The Structure of Scientific Theories in 1977. I begin with a painfully brief review of the essential arguments causing the abandoning. Then I turn to a discussion of some aspects of
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self Organization complexity catastrophe and microstate models at the edge of chaos
2002Co-Authors: Donald T Campbell, Joel A C Baum, Bill MckelveyAbstract:Consider General Motors Corporation. GM seems like a giant Sequoia tree rotting slowly from the top. Theories abound as to why: myopic management; hubris; politics, vertical integration, inefficiency, outdated plant and equipment, the Icarus Paradox (Miller 1990), resistance to change; permanently failing Organizations (Meyer and Zucker 1989), the unions; and so forth. GM is a dinosaur (Loomis 1993) stuck in a time warp with a “gargantuan bureaucracy” (Kerwin 1998, p. 26) that, as a high cost producer of low quality cars, is well off the efficiency curve. And it is not that there isn’t motive. The industry is very competitive and everyone in the industry knows GM is below the curve. Further, GM has spent billions trying to get back on the curve—some say they have spent more than the total asset value of Toyota. What is not working at GM and can Organization Science explain it? Like Gaul, Organization Science is divided into three parts: rational, natural, and open systems (Scott 1998). The rational system view, the visible hand Chandler (1977) calls it, puts the blame on managers. The natural system view—the invisible hand—tells us that the emergent structure is apparently defeating whatever good ideas the managers do come up with. And the open systems view? It focuses on environmental effects and boundary transactions. Paradigm proliferation (Donaldson 1995) further delineates views within Scott’s broad framework. Much as one might like some of the newer paradigms, Pfeffer (1997) cautions that much of the paradigm proliferation in Organization Science results from fads and fashion. He quotes himself 16 years earlier, saying, “If we use relatively simpler processes and models the world will appear to be simpler and more certain.... We overlook the potential for finding simpler models to describe the world” (1981, p. 411). So, in this chapter I reduce Scott’s framework to four driving forces: adaptive tension, self-Organization (by managers or nonmanagers), interdependency effects, and multilevel coevolution. Ironically Pfeffer (1997) decries the dangerous liaison with economics while simultaneously calling for simplicity. The one thing economists’ penchant for mathematical models has created is a constant drive for simplicity. They focus on just a few key variables otherwise the mathematics becomes intractable. Following the direction of current philosophy of Science, embodied in Campbellian Realism (McKelvey this volume), I not only follow Pfeffer and the economists in emphasizing parsimony, but also take a step in the direction of a formal model-centered Organization Science by framing my complexity theory application to firms in terms of computational models.1 Campbellian Realism calls, in part, for scientists to coevolve the development of theory and model so as to maximize “experimental adequacy” tests—the theory predicts model behavior and the model allows testing of the intricacies of the theory. Section 2 develops: (1) Self-Organization Theory—If the level of adaptive tension falls outside a region defined by the chaos theorists’ “critical values” (Cramer 1993),2 the resulting complexity field will not support the emergence of structures necessary for constructive adaptation; and (2) Complexity Catastrophe Theory—If the conditions of complexity catastrophe exist, Friedman’s (1953) natural selection based constrained maximization or Campbell’s blind variation, selection, and retention (BVSR) processes may function properly and yet fail to produce the kinds of intrafirm behavior necessary for survival and growth in a selectionist competitive context. Together these theories state that (1) critical value effects creating emergent structure in the mid range of adaptive tension; and (2) complexity effects on the flat and jagged extremes of rugged landscapes combine to produce a nonlinear inverted U effect on Organizational performance relative to adaptive tension and complexity. Section 3 illustrates how to set up the groundwork for testing experimental adequacy. The model frameworks come from Kauffman (1993). I draw on both his Boolean statistical mechanics and his NK[C] model. I conclude that (1) self-Organization and complexity catastrophe theories offer useful insights into the prolonged poor performance of large complex Organizations such as GM; and (2) computational modeling approaches offer a basis for testing the
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complexity theory in Organization Science seizing the promise or becoming a fad
Emergence, 1999Co-Authors: Bill MckelveyAbstract:Over the past thirty-five years complexity theory has become a broad ranging subject that is appreciated in a variety of ways, illustrated more or less in the books by Anderson, Arrow, and Pines (1988), Nicolis and Prigogine (1989), Mainzer (1994), Favre et al. (1995), Belew and Mitchell (1996), and Arthur, Durlauf, and Lane (1997). The study of “complex adaptive systems” (Cowan, Pines, and Meltzer, 1994) has become the ultimate interdisciplinary Science, focusing its modeling activities on how microstate events, whether particles, molecules, genes, neurons, human agents, or firms, self-organize into emergent aggregate structure. Clearly, the mission of this and subsequent issues of Emergence is to systematically build up a base of high quality scientific activity aimed at supporting complexity applications to management and Organization Science— thereby thwarting faddish tendencies. In this founding issue I suggest a bottom-up focus on Organizational microstates and the adoption of the “semantic conception” of scientific theory. The union of these two hallmarks of current Science and philosophy, along with computational modeling, may prevent complexity theory from becoming just another fad.
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perspective quasi natural Organization Science
Organization Science, 1997Co-Authors: Bill MckelveyAbstract:Positing that Organizational phenomena result from both individual human intentionality and natural causes independent of individuals' intended behavior, the need for a quasi-natural Organization Science is identified. The paradigm war is defined in terms of positivism and postpositivism, with the suggestion that a more relevant epistemology might be scientific realism. The current unconstructive paradigm proliferation is seen as resulting from an underlying cause, idiosyncratic Organizational microstates, phenomena identified by postmodernists. The article develops quasi-natural Organization Science as an antidote to multiparadigmaticism by recognizing that mathematically, computationally, and experimentally intense twentieth century natural Sciences all have microstate idiosyncrasy assumptions similar to those postmodernists suggest are true of Organizational phenomena. By framing a quasi-natural Organization Science focusing on microstates, my intent is not to deny the relevance of either intentionalit...
Isabel Fernandezmateo - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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gender and Organization Science introduction to a virtual special issue
Organization Science, 2018Co-Authors: Isabel Fernandezmateo, Sarah KaplanAbstract:Gendered processes and outcomes are pervasive in Organizational life. They shape how individuals perceive their career prospects, which types of opportunities they pursue, how they get work done within Organizations, and how they balance this work with the rest of their life. Organizations themselves also shape and are shaped by gender dynamics, from the ways they design jobs and performance evaluation systems to the assumptions managers make about individuals’ preferences and motivations. This virtual special issue collects together 14 papers published in Organization Science that challenge common understandings about the sources of gender differences in career outcomes, the effects of balancing work–life obligations, and the ways that gender dynamics play out in teams and Organizations. An important insight that emerges from a comparison of these studies is that demand effects are often confused for supply effects. What looks like a supply problem—we think that women choose not to aspire to top positions or to jobs in top paying fields—might actually be a demand problem—Organizations or jobs look unappealing to women because of past histories of not hiring or promoting women into leadership roles or of making work–life balance appear to be impossible. These studies suggest that essentialist explanations that attribute gendered outcomes to inherent characteristics or choices of women might be too simplistic or inaccurate. Instead, future research would benefit from examining the complex interactions between supply-side and demand-side drivers of gender inequality.
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gender and Organization Science introduction to a virtual special issue
Organization Science, 2018Co-Authors: Isabel Fernandezmateo, Sarah KaplanAbstract:Gendered processes and outcomes are pervasive in Organizational life. They shape how individuals perceive their career prospects, which types of opportunities they pursue, how they get work done wi...
