Modeling and Simulating the Exploration-Exploitation Dynamics in Complex Environments

Abstract

In today’s complex fast moving business environment, organizational learning has been said to be a key factor for success (Nonaka, 1991). Within the organizational learning research, finding a trade-off between exploration and exploitation has been proposed as a way to survive in a complex, competitive environment. March’s (1991) seminal paper is a go-to citation for anybody talking about exploration and exploitation - a framing which has become key and frequently present and has even found its way into the titles of hundreds of papers. Many attempts to replicate and extend the original model have been proposed, but none considered the complexity of the external environment. Consequently, the dissertation aims to extend March’s exploration-exploitation model (1991) by modelling the external environment as an NK Landscape (Kauffman, 1993) and understanding in this way the co-evolution of the background in which organizations and individuals perform.