Experimentalist Systems in Manufacturing Multinationals: Recursivity and Continuous Learning Through Destabilization

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter explores manufacturing MNC governance practices under conditions of uncertainty. It shows that organized recursivity in knowledge flow and practice (“experimentalism”) can diffuse learning and innovation throughout the MNC. Three sorts of obstacles, however, are common: hierarchical insulation, stakeholder exclusion, and inadequate empowerment resources for participants. These obstacles exist not only ex ante, as firms attempt to construct formal experimentalist systems; they also are continually regenerated by the experimentalist dynamics themselves. In order to avoid disruption of recursive flow, MNCs are developing an array of destabilization mechanisms to undermine obstacles and reconstitute the deliberative experimentalist learning process.