An exploration of the relationship between organizational structure and organizational memory using simulation

This dissertation explores relationships between organizational structure and organizational memory. Specifically, it explores what structures learn better under different scenarios related to knowledge orientation, information technology, and turbulence. It recognizes social relationships within the organization as an integral component of organizational memory, and defines them as relationship memory. This is in contrast to the other organizational memory component---skill memory. Social relationships are the link between individual memory and organizational memory, and the structuration process (Giddens, 1984) is the link between individual learning and organizational learning. This research uses three basic organization forms---hierarchy, team, and dynamic hierarchy---to represent organizational structures. Three impacts of organizational structure on organizational memory/learning are studied---on the content of organizational memory, on knowledge transfer activities, and on organizational performance. Task environment plays a moderating role in these relationships.; This dissertation studies two dimensions of task environment that are critical to organizational learning: knowledge-environment orientation, which is either tacit-knowledge oriented or explicit-knowledge oriented (Polanyi, 1996, Nonaka, 1994), and environment turbulence, which is defined as dynamic diversity of the task environment. A simulation model was built to test those relationships. It extends simulation models built by Sandoe (1994) and Carley (1992) by introducing cross-person learning into the simulation. Furthermore, this dissertation inspects the role of information technology---as both a knowledge storage facility and an organizational design tool---in organizational learning. An organizational-wide knowledge base is implemented in the simulation model, and the structuration process between employees and the knowledge base is simulated.; The research results indicate that team is best for employees to maintain social relationships and dynamic hierarchy is best for employees to retain skills. Besides, implementing an organizational knowledge base turns out to be a more powerful organizational design tool than choosing an organizational form. Finally, this research shows that learning is a fairly complicated process and a multiple-measurement approach is necessary to make a comprehensive evaluation of an organization's learning capacity.