Chasing a Moving Target: Exploitation and Exploration in Dynamic Environments
研究了环境变化如何影响组织在利用现有知识和探索新知识之间的权衡，发现环境变化并不总是要求更多探索，有时反而应加强利用。
A common justification for organizational change is that the circumstances in which the organization finds itself have changed, thereby eroding the value of utilizing existing knowledge. On the surface, the claim that organizations should adapt by generating new knowledge seems obvious and compelling. However, this standard wisdom overlooks the possibility that the reward to generating new knowledge may itself be eroded if change is an ongoing property of the environment. This observation in turn suggests that environmental change is not a self-evident call for strategies of greater exploration. Indeed, under some conditions the appropriate response to environmental change is a renewed focus on exploiting existing knowledge and opportunities. We develop a computational model based on the canonical multiarmed bandit formulation of exploration and exploitation. We endeavor to understand the mechanisms by which environmental change acts to make purposeful efforts at organizational adaptation less (or more) valuable. This paper was accepted by Jesper Sørensen, organizations.