Knowledge, hierarchy and the selection of routines: an interpretative model with group interactions

The aim of this paper is to analyze the selection of routines inside an organizational structure characterized by different cognitive representations and facing hierarchical pressure leading to either truce or conflict. After a brief discussion of the role of hierarchy and the related problems of organizational practice selection in the evolutionary literature, we model the interactions between different groups within a firm trying to interfere with its coordination mechanisms in order to support their own practices. Numerical simulations highlight the different learning abilities present in various organizational set-ups and their related knowledge distribution. It is shown that networking designs are the most profitable organizational configurations because of their dynamics of learning, though they are very sensitive to the truce problem. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2005