Simulation Of Environmental Scanning, Organizational Structure And Organizational Learning Performance In Dynamic Environments

The era of knowledge economy is approaching. Organizations, especially enterprises, arefacing a more and more complex environment which requires organizations to adapt to iteffectively. The ability to be adaptive to the environment becomes a key factor for organizationsto survive. The key solution for organizations is organizational learning. Organization structureand environmental scanning, as the foundation and method of an enterprise，have an essentialimpact on organizational learning. This dissertation discusses the relationship betweenorganization structure, environmental scanning and organizational learning in order to helpChinese enterprises improve organizational learning ability and their own competitiveness.Firstly, this dissertation starts with review of abundant literature and summaries the conceptand the model of organizational learning, concept of organization structure and environmentalscanning and its descriptive system. And then we point out the deifciency of current research onthe relationship between organization structure, environmental scanning and organizationallearning.Secondly, with a systematic view, this dissertation analyzes the function and relationship oforganizational structure, environmental scanning and other influential factors in an organizationallearning system, and makes clear how organizational learning and organization structure,environmental scanning works on each other. It indicates that organizational structure andenvironmental scanning are the important influential factors of organizational learning.Finally, on the basis of theoretical analysis, this dissertation brings the research hypothesisand research model. Using multi-agent simulation model，we treat the entire organization as a’’learning system". And we set up several Agent variables of external environment, organizationstructure and environmental scanning. Then we simulate the organizational learning process andanalyze the simulation results.According to the simulation results, several research conclusions are drawn. Organizationstructure and environmental scanning are the two important influential factors of organizationallearning. Environmental scanning can improve the performance of organization learningeffectively and show a positive correlation. Decentralized structure is beneifcial to theorganization to adapt the environment itself. In the dynamic environment, decentralized structureis beneifcial to spontaneous scanning strategy to enhance the knowledge level, and centralizedstructure is beneifcial to active scanning strategy to enhance the knowledge level.This dissertation ifrst adds environmental scanning (organization external learning) to theorganizational learning. When the organizations use the active scanning strategy, the performanceof centralized structure is higher than decentralized structure. This result breaks the traditionalconcept that decentralized structure is more effective than centralized structure in the process of adapting the environment, and promotes the development of organizational learning theory. Italso provides some advice for Chinese centralized enetrprises.