Intra-organizational Vicarious Learning, Organizational Resilience and its Trade-off With Efficiency

Abstract

Organizational learning is a double-edged sword when it comes to determining an organization's efficiency in tranquil times and resilience in crisis times simultaneously. Through an agent based simulation, this work identifies malleability, attractiveness of next best action, and diversity, similarity in attractiveness all alternative actions, as two fundamental mechanisms driving an organization's post-shock search behavior, consequently resilience response. High density symmetric intra-organizational vicarious learning patterns among agents are shown to preserve diversity while reducing malleability. Meanwhile, less dense and asymmetric patterns lead to higher levels of malleability and less diversity. The short- and long-term performance consequences of these search behavior and exogenous factors such as organizational age at shock and shock duration offer boundary conditions to when a trade-off between efficiency and resilience may emerge; this refines our understanding regarding the efficiency consequences of pursuing organizational resilience mediated by organizational learning.