Algorithmic Representations of Managerial Search Behavior

Tracy, William Martin; Markovitch, Dmitri G.; Peters, Lois S.; Phani, B.V.; Philip, Deepu

doi:10.1007/s10614-015-9559-7

Cited by 9 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Recent work in strategy has heavily drawn on computational models inspired by the NK fitness approach (Aggarwal, Siggelkow, & Singh, 2011;Gavetti, Levinthal, & Rivkin, 2005;Ghemawat & Levinthal, 2008). Our results suggest a more elaborate decision process for how search unfolds, which may help establish process validity in these models (Harrison et al, 2007;Tracy, Markovitch, Peters, Phani, & Philip, 2017) and help generate more actionable insights.…”

Section: Role Of Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 66%

“…Positive feedback—finding an alternative that improves the status quo—could signal an attractive cluster of alternatives that should be examined further by searching in the neighborhood of that alternative (Busemeyer et al, 1986; Busemeyer & Myung, 1987; Hoeffler et al, 2006; Vuculescu, 2017). Failure to find a better alternative, on the other hand, increases the likelihood that the location of search shifts to a different region in the search space and the search for a new alternative becomes more distant relative to the status quo (Billinger et al, 2014; Tracy et al, 2017). Finally, when search is costly, even if only in terms of opportunity costs, this tendency to narrow search after encountering positive feedback will be reinforced.…”

Section: Local or Distant Search?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This limits the application of their study to settings of decision‐making in which the exploration of alternatives often carries considerable risks, such as in most real‐world situations involving new product or new business model development. In the current study, we introduce an opportunity cost of changing the status quo, because subjects are remunerated based on the total payoffs accumulated over all search trials and not just on the final pay‐off of the best alternative as in prior work (Billinger et al, 2014; Tracy et al, 2017; Vuculescu, 2017).…”

Section: Experimental Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Exploration and exploitation in complex search tasks: How feedback influences whether and where human agents search

Billinger

Srikanth

Stieglitz

et al. 2020

Strategic Management Journal

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Research Abstract Exploration and exploitation in strategic decision‐making entails decisions about whether and where to search for new alternatives to improve the status quo. Prior research has not explored how decisions about whether to continue search (vs. stop search or satisfice) and where to search (near vs. far) are interrelated. We report laboratory experiment results on how individuals decide whether and where to search in a complex, combinatorial task. We find that different feedback variables influence the decision to stop search from decisions regarding how broadly to search. Our results suggest that not accounting for the decision to continue (or stop) searching, separately from breadth of search, can lead to incorrect predictions regarding how feedback influences search behavior. Managerial Abstract Managers concerned about the performance of their company face two challenges—they have to find out what potential performance is feasible given their business environment and which organizational policies to implement to realize it. We use a stylized laboratory experiment to better understand how feedback from experimentation informs such a learning process. We find that early‐stage feedback has a lasting impact on performance aspirations and managerial expectations about feasible performance. Superior early feedback thereby motivates more sustained experimentation with organizational policies. In contrast, more recent feedback guides the extent to which managers are willing to engage in more radical policy adjustments, especially in the latter stages of a learning process.

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Section: Role Of Feedbackmentioning

confidence: 66%

Section: Local or Distant Search?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Experimental Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Exploration and exploitation in complex search tasks: How feedback influences whether and where human agents search

Billinger

Srikanth

Stieglitz

et al. 2020

Strategic Management Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While empirical work on organizational search is therefore mixed, as Frenken et al [68] point out, the assumption of one-bit flip is of limited relevance in the context of human search behaviors, since such a one-bit-flip conception does not fit human behavior: human problemsolvers are not constrained to engaging in small, incremental 6 Complexity changes. Indeed, a number of experimental studies all showcase an average Hamming distance of about 2.5 [11,28,32]. In another landmark study, Mason and Watts [69] find that empirical data of search behavior deviate significantly from current models of search.…”

Section: Changing Search Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…e model's most famous extension, the NK model [6], explicitly models adaptive evolution as a "search in protein space" [6] which tries to find a maximum point for a chosen fitness function. is approach has grown outside the boundaries of population genetics literature and inspired a series of scholars from computer science [7], organizational theory [8][9][10], economics [11], cultural evolution [12], and physics [13,14] to computationally model complex, adaptive systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human Search in a Fitness Landscape: How to Assess the Difficulty of a Search Problem

et al. 2020

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Computational modeling is widely used to study how humans and organizations search and solve problems in fields such as economics, management, cultural evolution, and computer science. We argue that current computational modeling research on human problem-solving needs to address several fundamental issues in order to generate more meaningful and falsifiable contributions. Based on comparative simulations and a new type of visualization of how to assess the nature of the fitness landscape, we address two key assumptions that approaches such as the NK framework rely on: that the NK captures the continuum of the complexity of empirical fitness landscapes and that search behavior is a distinct component, independent from the topology of the fitness landscape. We show the limitations of the most common approach to conceptualize how complex, or rugged, a landscape is, as well as how the nature of the fitness landscape is fundamentally intertwined with search behavior. Finally, we outline broader implications for how to simulate problem-solving.

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Managing exploration in organizations: The effect of superior monitoring on subordinate search behavior

Richter

Janjic

Klapper

et al. 2023

Strategic Management Journal

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Research SummaryIn this article, we explore the effects of managerial monitoring on the behavior of subordinates tasked with the search for alternatives in a complex environment. We argue that managerial monitoring will lead subordinates to exhibit more search than they would engage in otherwise as they try to impress their superiors by exerting more effort. We test and confirm our hypothesis in four laboratory studies with a total of 444 participants. Our findings show that search distance and duration are highly susceptible to managerial monitoring, whereas similar interventions from peers and subordinates are ineffective.Managerial SummaryA key task for employees is to find new solutions to corporate problems when and where they occur. But what determines how long these individuals search and how far they venture before settling on one solution eventually? And how can and should managers steer this process, particularly if they are as unknowing about potential solutions as their subordinates? Here, we show that leaders can bring their staff to explore complex solution spaces longer and more remotely by regularly appraising their subordinates' efforts. This is because employees will feel an enhanced need to demonstrate their industriousness to their bosses, and long and distant search is easily justified. Whether this increases corporate performance depends on the complexity of the solution space and the opportunity costs of search.

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Algorithmic Representations of Managerial Search Behavior

Cited by 9 publications

References 39 publications

Exploration and exploitation in complex search tasks: How feedback influences whether and where human agents search

Exploration and exploitation in complex search tasks: How feedback influences whether and where human agents search

Human Search in a Fitness Landscape: How to Assess the Difficulty of a Search Problem

Managing exploration in organizations: The effect of superior monitoring on subordinate search behavior

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