Organizational performance in hierarchies and communities of practice
Authored by Olivier Dupouet
Date Published: 2006-12
DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2004.07.011
Sponsors:
Region Aquitaine
Platforms:
Java
Model Documentation:
Other Narrative
Flow charts
Mathematical description
Model Code URLs:
Model code not found
Abstract
In an earlier article we studied the Communities of Practice and their conditions of emergence using an Agent based model with a set of agents facing a continuous flow of problems. We now center our analysis on the performance of this organizational structure compared to a two-level hierarchical delegation structure. Our results show the crucial role played by the communication and the specialisation of agents; especially that community structures are efficient for competence building and learning in the long term. This paper backs the claim made by (Bowles, S., Gintis, H., 2002. Social capital and community governance. The Economic Journal 112, 419-437.) that hierarchy and communities are complementary modes of governance. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Tags
Learning
Communities of practice
Hierarchy
emergence of networks
organisational efficiency