The Influence Of Management For Breaking Organizational Paths - A Simulation Study

We examine how means of management affect the breaking of organizational paths. Prior studies on the interplay between management and organizational path dependence explored the self-assertion of increasing returns in hierarchies, path dependence in management teams, influence of rigid cognitive maps on organizational change or the short-term thinking in strategic planning (Petermann, 2010; Beckman & Burton, 2008; Tripsas & Gavetti, 2000; Holtmann, 2008). But up to now there is only little known about how management affects breaking of organizational paths. As the strategic inflexibility of path dependence may result in inefficiencies for an organization, means for breaking paths are of interest not only for the theoretical concept of path dependence but also for practicioners. We contribute to close this research gap by developing an intraorganizational learning model of path constitution in a narrow sense and then examine the influence of integration, restructuring and turnover on their ability to break paths. In doing so we focus on an information and balance rule on micro level and observe emerging properties on system level. Our findings indicate that the proposed means could potentially break paths with the probability of path break depending on the micro behaviour of actors. We further found that turnover on management level is the most effective approach and hint to difficulties in breaking paths.