Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

A view of organizations as complex, computational and adaptive systems in which knowledge and learning are embedded in multiple levels is presented. According to this perspective, activity at one level can interfere with or support activity at other levels. As such, organizational adaptation requires finding a balance between these levels. These ideas are illustrated using results from a computational model of organizational performance. Results suggest that organizations can trade knowledge and learning at one level for knowledge and learning at another. As such, for the organization performance becomes a balancing act between levels.