Adaptive organisations and environmental change
by Hosein Piranfar
International Journal of Agile Systems and Management (IJASM), Vol. 1, No. 2, 2006

Abstract: Organisational learning is normally the province of the adaptationist school of evolutionary thought. Considering that the most prominent evolutionary thinkers are gravitating to a synthetic outlook in which adaptation and selection are combined to provide a more practical, environmentally oriented view of learning, the paper makes an attempt to analyse some of the major works in this field, providing more practical examples from industry. The focus is on a particularly new development in organisational learning that seems to move away from March to advocate Simon's 'near decomposability and hierarchy' in order to facilitate 'intelligent' adaptation. This kind of adaptation is particularly responsive to the environment, moving between first-order and second-order adaptation as the situation requires. The distinction from contingency school is that in the evolutionary view organisations respond and at the same time transform themselves.

Online publication date: Tue, 19-Sep-2006

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