Michael Shayne Gary

Enhancing Mental Models, Analogical Transfer, and Performance in Strategic Decision Making

Recent research suggests that managers often make strategic decisions in novel situations by utilizing past experiences to reason by analogy. However, there is substantial evidence that decision makers often fail to identify and apply knowledge about one situation to a similarly structured situation. Two experimental studies investigated the mechanisms impacting knowledge transfer from one managerial situation (the source) to an analogous situation. The results show that exposure to variation in the source situation improves transfer performance. Variation decreases performance in the short term but improves learning and increases analogical transfer. Higher performance on and systematic search of the source situation also increase transfer performance. These results yield important implications for enhancing analogical transfer in strategic decision making and for future research on reasoning by analogy. Copyright

Mergers and Acquisitions: Modeling Decision Making in Integration Projects

This chapter discusses how to model human behaviour and how models behave. To illustrate these two points, we provide an example simulation model of a merger and acquisition (M&A) integration project that incorporates numerous behavioural assumptions using an information feedback control perspective. Simulation experiments demonstrate that the model is capable of replicating four common M&A integration performance patterns of behaviour. Our example model shows how behavioural models can generate new and important insights about dynamic, complex problems, such as integrating a merger or acquisition. Such models are particularly suited to exploring the dynamic consequences of different behavioural implementation policies.

Exploring the impact of organizational growth via diversification

Abstract This paper explores the process and evolution of organization growth via a diversification move. Simulation experiments indicate there is a threshold effect between degree of relatedness and firm performance driven by interactions with underlying organizational processes. Relatedness, firm level resource accumulation, managerial policies, industry and market factors, are all represented within the boundary of the mathematical model presented. The results demonstrate that it is crucial to incorporate these different levels of analysis into research on such a complex organizational issue, since all of these factors play vital roles in determining the success or failure of a diversification strategy.

Impact of Delays and Noise on Emergence of Strategies

How do learning and adaptation processes impact heterogeneity in firms’ strategies and outcomes? In an experiment using a realistic simulation of a service firm we investigate how two common featur...