Individual and organizational conditions for the emergence and evolution of bandwagons

Authored by Davide Secchi, Nicole L Gullekson

Date Published: 2016

DOI: 10.1007/s10588-015-9199-4

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: NetLogo

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: https://www.comses.net/codebases/4716/releases/1.0.0/

Abstract

What makes employees adopt a particular innovation, practice, or idea? And what makes it more likely for adoption to spread wide in an organization? This paper presents an agent-based model that simulates interactions among employees to analyze the spread of bandwagons. Agents are subject to conformity and peer pressure as well as to a two-level organizational hierarchy. In the model, perceptions of the surrounding environment depend on individual cognitive attitudes (or `tolerance' to bandwagons), the level of ambiguity attached to social relationships, and organization size. Findings show that the probability of widespread diffusion (i.e., bandwagon) is dependent more on organizational size, conformity, and interactions than ambiguity and individual attitudes.

Tags

Agent Dynamics Bounded rationality Culture Innovation Diffusion collective behavior Special-issue Simulation-models Management fashion Social contagion