When Exploration Backfires: Unintended Consequences of Multilevel Organizational Search
通过基于主体的仿真模型，研究发现多层级组织中低层成员的广泛探索可能适得其反，减少整体探索并损害需要广泛搜索的环境下的绩效，这取决于跨部门相互依赖关系。
An enduring belief is that unleashing low-level members of an organization to explore extensively will broaden the exploration conducted by the entire organization. Using an agent-based simulation model, we show that in multilevel organizations, increased exploration at lower levels can backfire, reducing overall exploration and diminishing performance in environments that require broad search. This result arises when interdependencies cut across the domains of low-level managers. With no cross-departmental interdependencies, more extensive low-level exploration can improve firm performance. Our findings show that careful attention to information processing in multilevel organizations can shed light on whether, and when, decentralization encourages innovation.