EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning

James G. March
Additional contact information
James G. March: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305

Organization Science, 1991, vol. 2, issue 1, 71-87

Abstract: This paper considers the relation between the exploration of new possibilities and the exploitation of old certainties in organizational learning. It examines some complications in allocating resources between the two, particularly those introduced by the distribution of costs and benefits across time and space, and the effects of ecological interaction. Two general situations involving the development and use of knowledge in organizations are modeled. The first is the case of mutual learning between members of an organization and an organizational code. The second is the case of learning and competitive advantage in competition for primacy. The paper develops an argument that adaptive processes, by refining exploitation more rapidly than exploration, are likely to become effective in the short run but self-destructive in the long run. The possibility that certain common organizational practices ameliorate that tendency is assessed.

Keywords: organizational learning; risk taking; knowledge and competitive advantage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1991
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3435)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2.1.71 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:2:y:1991:i:1:p:71-87

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Organization Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher (casher@informs.org).

 
Page updated 2025-02-15
Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:2:y:1991:i:1:p:71-87