AbstractsPsychology

Due to the turbulence of these times and to the embeddedness of an interdependent, global economy, many organizations attempt to enhance their competitive advantage by actively exploring their external environment. Building on earlier research to explore organization-environment interaction via boundary-spanning activity, this study investigates such interactions via tests of analytical adequacy to observe the emergence of the adaptive tension between exploration and exploitation of organizations in a coevolutionary context. After replicating March’s (1991) seminal research, this study extends the March model to investigate a coevolutionary, competitive context. Results from computational experiments confirmed the analytical adequacy of the extensions to the original March model. Future research should address further investigation of the extended model’s analytical adequacy and ontological adequacy. In so doing, this study provides support for a model-centered organization science and the application of complexity theory to organization science research. * In addition to the personal acknowledgments below, I am grateful for discussions of a technical nature with the following: Robert Axtell, Michael Cohen, Stephen Guerin, Matthew Koehler, James March, John Miller, Melanie Mitchell, Michael Prietula and Stephen Upton. I would also like to thank participants at the 3rd Lake Arrowhead Conference on Human Complex Systems, the 2006 Organization Science Winter Conference, and the 2006 Santa Fe Institute Complex Systems Summer School where many aspects of this research were developed and presented.