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Abstract: Environmental scanning is the acquisition and use of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's external environment, the knowledge of which would assist management in planning the organization's future course of action. Depending on the organization's beliefs about environmental analyzability and the extent that it intrudes into the environment to understand it, four modes of scanning may be differentiated: undirected viewing, conditioned viewing, enacting, and searching. We analyze each mode of scanning by examining its characteristic information needs, information seeking, and information use behaviors. In addition, we analyze organizational knowing processes by considering the sensemaking, knowledge creating and decision

doi 10.1287/mnsc.1040.0223

This paper deals with management challenges in emergent business networks in times of radical technological change. First, a framework describing the environment of emergent networks is proposed. Second, the processes which constitute the proposed phases of emergence are discussed. Finally, the core company-level tasks in each phase are identified and dynamic capabilities for managing these tasks are suggested.

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Emerging organizational research has proposed increasingly nuanced links between capabilities and routines, which in turn play vital roles in organizational survival and prosperity. We draw on prior work to define capabilities as involving some consistency in potential outcomes in a particular domain. This contrasts with routines, which involve consistency in processes. We report results of an inductive study of patterns linking capabilities and routines in 60 young firms, drawing on 1,725 transcript pages. Many capabilities arose through deliberate design or combinations of existing routines. In rare cases organizations repeatedly improvised in a particular area and thereby sustained capabilities that did not rely on consistent routines in the relevant action domain. We also found several ways in which organizational capabilities sometimes harmed overall organizational performance, although in some cases the organizations learned from harmful capabilities. Routines arose from multiple sources. We highlight three forms of “making do ” with routines available from varied sources, all forms of bricolage. Finally, routines played several roles in organizational transformation in addition to their contribution to inertia. The paper suggests that we can theoretically distinguish capabilities from routines even as they are intertwined over time in organizations, and that improvisation and bricolage play roles in organizational entrepreneurial learning.

Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems. To my wife, Libby, and to my family, whom I love beyond words… Computational methods combined with traditional empirical techniques offer a powerful new approach to the study of human performance. Scholars engaged in the study of work group and organizational behavior are increasingly calling for the use of integrated methods in conducting research, including the wider adoption of computational models for generating and testing new theory. In this collection of three studies, I first review the state of modern computational modeling and find a steady increase in the incorporation of dynamic, adaptive, and realistic behaviors of agents in social network settings. However, my analysis suggests areas that can be addressed in the next generation of organizational simulation systems. I compare 28 models according to more than 200 evaluation criteria, ranging from simple representations of agent demographic and performance characteristics, to more richly defined instantiations of behavioral attributes, interaction with non-agent entities, model

In 1966, Harvard economist Harvey Leibenstein published an important article, questioning the prevailing assumption that competitive pressures are sufficient to guarantee efficient outcomes. Leibenstein offered examples of virtually identical firms producing differing results, which he took to be evidence that many firms do not operate optimally. Leibenstein proposed that imperceptible factors explain what must be deviations from maximum efficiency.

This is an essay in postclassical theory and modelling, and more specifically an attempt to think about organisation and management. Our focus is on cognition and communication, not on objectivity

Much of the research in the area of knowledge management has been at the individual level. Knowledge management literature, on the other hand, argues for the building up of knowledge processing capacity at an organizational level to enhance organization performance. This study is an effort to address this research gap. It looks at the ability of the organizations to collect knowledge at subunit level and integrate the knowledge for use at the organizational level to achieve organizational effectiveness. Drawing from three theoretical foundations (behavioral theory of the firm, decision-making paradigm and theory of organizational agility), I develop a conceptual research model, which focuses on how knowledge management systems (KMS) impact organizational decision-making, agility and adaptive behavior. Two key components of KMS are focused on, the knowledge reach and knowledge richness of information systems. I propose to investigate the research model by conducting a 14 week business simulation game. To analyze the results of the data, I will use a statistical technique called latent growth modeling, which allows analysis of the dependent variables in this repeated measures experimental design. 1 Gupta/Organizational knowledge