The Tangled Nature Model for Organizational Ecology

Abstract

The Tangled Nature Model, a biologically inspired model of evolutionary ecology, is described, simulated and analyzed to show its applicability in organization science and organizational ecology, both as a conceptual framework and as a tool for qualitative prediction about real organizations. We find that a symbiotic group of core organizations is generated, with the core disrupted at random by parasitic interactions causing sudden core rearrangements. This core is a spontaneously generated mesoscopic level of structure between the individual and whole system level. As a simple application of the model, we study the adaptation of organizations to changes in resource availability in terms of population size, population diversity, and ecological efficiency. We find evidence that a temporary reduction in resources forces a consolidation resulting in a sustained increase in overall efficiency, suggesting that such reductions can be applied strategically to drive incremental improvements.

Keywords: Organizational Ecology, Co-Evolution, Multi-Level Modeling, Organizational Adaptation