Beneficial Effects of Randomized Organi...

In this paper, we investigate the effects on performance of inducing organizational dynamics in collaborative search processes. Using an agent-based simulation, we analyze different temporal modes and levels of scope of change. The organizational properties under change are chosen randomly out of three dimensions of organizational design. Results suggest that inducing organizational dynamics has the potential to increase the effectiveness of search, but that the temporal change mode, the frequency and the scope of change in conjunction with the complexity of the search problem considerably affect the order of magnitude of this beneficial effect. The paper characterizes conditions under which different modalities of organizational change are beneficial.