Replying to LO26192 --
Quoting previous msg:
"I would argue that there are no environments (anymore?) that are stable
enough to allow this level of efficiency. The most effective system of
learning I know (evolution) uses genes (and memes if you want) to evolve.
It is hardly very efficient (although it appeared that our genome was more
efficient that we thought :-) )."
----- End of quote ------
In "Renewing American Industry" (1983), Lawrence and Dyer frame the
problem in terms of readaptation: "An organization is defined as being in
a state of readaptation when its performance is simultaneously efficient
and innovative."
They was a framework of Information Complexity and Resource Scarcity to
explore how the environment influences the organization's mechanisms for
readaptation. Where organizations face relatively low Information
Complexity they favor Bureaucratic Mechanisms to maximize efficiency.
Organizations facing high Information Complexity and Low Resource Scarcity
tend to favor Clan mechanisms (for example, initially the U.S. health care
industry when third party medical insurance became the norm).
Organizations facing high Information Complexity and High Resource
Scarcity tend to favor Market mechanisms.
The challenge of today's competitive markets is that high Information
Complexity and high Resource Scarcity demand organizations to be both
efficient and innovative and, according to Lawrence and Dyer's framework,
in this environment market forces will provide the primary organizing
mechanism.
It is interesting that you raise evolution as the most effective system of
learning. Where markets are the primary organizing mechanism, innovation
is a Darwinian process. The organizations that guess correctly will live
for a while, the ones that guess wrong will die. While this may be
efficient learning for the species, it is not too enjoyable for the ones
who die. I'd argue that in the extreme case, the learning isn't done at
the individual level of the system. The "organization" learns without
the individual learning anything.
Doug Merchant
--"Doug Merchant" <dougm@eclipse.net>
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