It is well recognized that many organizations operate under situations of high complexity that arises from pervasive interdependencies between their decision elements. While prior work has discussed the benefits of low to moderate complexity, the literature on how to cope with high complexity is relatively sparse. In this study, we seek to demonstrate that Lindblom’s decision-making principle of muddling through is a very effective approach that organizations can use to cope with high complexity. Using a computational simulation (NK) model, we show that Lindblom’s muddling through approach obtains outcomes superior to those obtained from boundedly rational decision-making approaches when complexity is high. Moreover, our results also show that muddling through is an appropriate vehicle for bringing in radical organizational change or far-reaching adaptation.

众所周知，许多组织在高度复杂的情况下运作，这种情况源于其决策要素之间普遍存在的相互依赖性。虽然之前的工作已经讨论了低到中等复杂性的好处，但关于如何应对高复杂性的文献相对较少。在这项研究中，我们试图证明 Lindblom 的蒙混 过关的决策原则是组织可以用来应对高度复杂性的一种非常有效的方法。使用计算模拟 ( NK ) 模型，我们展示了 Lindblom蒙混 过关当复杂性很高时，方法获得的结果优于从有限理性决策方法获得的结果。此外，我们的研究结果还表明，得过且过 是带来根本性组织变革或影响深远的适应的合适工具。