Adaptive organizations and emergent forms

Abstract

Over time organizations change and coordinate personnel in new ways as the environment, technologies, and legislation changes. This adaptation is constrained and not all forms of coordination are feasible. Since organizations are inherently computational entities insight is gained by examining adaptation in organizations of intelligent artificial agents. Using ORGAHEAD a series of virtual experiments were run. Results suggest that concurrent learning mechanisms generate the ability to learn meta-change strategies which can be either adaptive or maladaptive. Consequently both organizational performance and form depend on environmental change, agent and structural learning, and the emergence of institutionalized strategies.