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Organization Science
Vol. 18, No. 3, May–June 2007, pp. 337–349
issn 1047-7039 eissn 1526-5455 07 1803 0337
informs®
doi 10.1287/orsc.1070.0280
© 2007 INFORMS
A Behavioral Theory of the Firm—40 Years and
Counting: Introduction and Impact
Linda Argote
Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213,
argote@andrew.cmu.edu
Henrich R. Greve
Norwegian School of Management BI, 0442 Oslo, Norway, henrich.greve@bi.no
In this introductory piece, we take stock of the impact of Cyert and March’s A Behavioral Theory of the Firm, describe
current research trends in the behavioral tradition, and introduce the special issue’s papers. A Behavioral Theory of the
Fir m is one of the most influential management books of all time. In the book, Cyert and March developed theoretical
building blocks that became the foundations for current research in organizational studies in management, economics,
political science, and sociology. Cyert and March also made theoretical propositions that are investigated and extended in
current work on organizational learning theory and evolutionary economics.
Key words: behavioral theory; bounded rationality; search; aspiration levels; organizational learning; routines; innovation
Introduction
When A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Cyert and
March 1963) had become 40 years old, work started
on an Organization Science special issue. Along with
our guest-editors, we have seen this special issue evolve
from a call for papers, through submissions and reviews,
to a conference at Carnegie Mellon, and now into print.
Fittingly for the ideas expressed in a book on organiza-
tional processes, it is now 44 years and counting. The
special issue has become a forum for reflection on the
development of the behavioral theory of the firm as well
as for reporting the most recent research. Although it is
a daunting task to introduce a stream of research that has
become so large and diverse, we will use this introduc-
tion to describe some influences of A Behavioral Theory
of the Firm and suggest directions for future research.
A Behavioral Theory of the Firm (the book) has not
generated a behavioral theory of the firm (a theory), at
least not if we define theory as a consistent set of defined
concepts and assumptions, and derived causal predic-
tions. Instead, there are now many behavioral theories of
the firm, each using different assumptions and deriving
different predictions. Perhaps it was because they pre-
dicted this outcome that Cyert and March called it A(not
“The”) Behavioral Theory of the Firm. However, they
could not have predicted the book’s impact. The book
continues to be one of the most influential management
books of all time. It has inspired and legitimated new
approaches for studying organizations; become a foun-
dational element of organizational studies in manage-
ment, economics, political science, and sociology; and
produced a set of hypotheses that are being tested and
elaborated today. This is a remarkably broad influence
for a book that made a pointed critique of the (economic)
theory of the firm in its days and a few suggestions on
how to improve it.
As often happens to work that has had a major impact
over a long time, the impact sometimes is more note-
worthy in terms of breadth rather than depth. Along with
Organizations (March and Simon 1958), A Behavioral
Theory of the Firm is an oft-cited starting point of theory
taking a bounded rationality view of decision making
and organizational behavior. This use of the theory cap-
tures an important aspect of the book, which criticized
the maximization assumption and argued for a greater
emphasis on behavioral routines in theorizing. At the
same time building on the concept of bounded rationality
is not a very specific use of the book. Bounded rational-
ity, like rationality, is a lot like ancient Rome—all roads
lead to it, so you can get from there to practically any-
where. When bounded rationality, or other assumptions
or theory elements from the book are used to build new
theory, the result can look strikingly different from the
original.
Several research traditions have been influenced by A
Behavioral Theory of the Firm even though they dif-
fer from it in important respects. As we will argue, the
influence has often been in the form of adopting its area
of research interest and approach to studying organiza-
tions. Through the adoption of these elements, the field
of organization science (including its branches in man-
agement, sociology, and economics) has obtained coher-
ence in outlook and approach even as it is highly diverse
in theoretical assumptions. If we are correct in tracing
337
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
338 Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS
these commonalities back to A Behavioral Theory of the
Fir m, then the book has been essential for developing
a field where diversity coexists with a fruitful dialogue
between perspectives. Along with the complexity of the
subject matter, these conditions have helped the field of
organizational science to make rapid progress.
A more specific influence from A Behavioral Theory
of the Firm can be seen in the adoption of specific the-
oretical assumptions of the theory in the construction
of other theories. Many organizational theories explic-
itly adopt bounded rationality as an assumption, and
more specific mechanisms like problemistic search and
various versions of local (myopic) search have also
been used as microassumptions in theories deriving
macrolevel predictions such as mimetic isomorphism
(DiMaggio and Powell 1983) or organizational momen-
tum (Amburgey et al. 1993). We will briefly note a selec-
tion of such influences as an illustration of how broadly
the theoretical assumptions in A Behavioral Theory of
the Firm have spread.
The most direct descendents of A Behavioral Theory
of the Firm are organizational learning theory (Argote
1999, Huber 1991, Levitt and March 1988, Miner and
Mezias 1996) and evolutionary economics (Nelson and
Winter 2002). Both follow the book closely in basic
assumptions, approaches, and research questions. Orga-
nizational learning theory and evolutionary economics
are both well-defined traditions that each have a coher-
ent set of assumptions and clearly articulated research
questions, and that currently generate much empiri-
cal research and theory building. Interestingly, these
research traditions are seeing a degree of mixing and
integration of ideas (Gavetti and Levinthal 2004). We
will examine these research traditions and comment
on their recent developments and potential for cross-
fertilization.
This introductory essay provides an overview of the
principles that are the foundations of the behavioral the-
ory of the firm and discusses how these principles shape
current research on organizations. We then turn to an
analysis of key concepts and theoretical mechanisms
developed in A Behavioral Theory and show that these
concepts have influenced major theoretical perspectives
on organizations, including institutional theory, popula-
tion ecology, and organizational economics. We discuss
the two behavioral research traditions most closely con-
nected to Cyert and March’s book: evolutionary eco-
nomics and organizational learning theory. The extent of
empirical support for hypotheses and theoretical mech-
anisms proposed in A Behavioral Theory of the Firm is
described. The papers in the special issue are introduced
and how they reflect current research on organizations is
described.
A Behavioral Approach
A Behavioral Theory of the Firm begins with four com-
mitments that are worth quoting because they explain its
impact well and are important for current research:
1. Focus on a small number of key economic decisions
made by the firm. In the first instance, these were price
and output decisions; subsequently they included internal
allocation and market strategy decisions.
2. Develop process-oriented models of the firm. That
is, we viewed decisions of the firm as the result of a well-
defined sequence of behaviors in that firm; we wished to
study the decisions by studying the process.
3. Link models of the firm as closely as possible to
empirical observations of both the decision output and
the process structure of actual business organizations.
The models were to be both explicitly based on obser-
vations of firms and subject to empirical test against the
actual behavior of identifiable firms.
4. Develop a theory with generality beyond the specific
firms studied. We wanted a set of summary concepts and
relations that could be used to understand the behavior
of a variety of organizations in a variety of decision sit-
uations. (Cyert and March 1963, p. 2, italics in original)
The first and last of these four commitments paralleled
the economic theory of the firm (in 1963) through claims
to the same domain of research and the same generality.
The second and third were departures from the economic
theory of the firm, and have become turning points in
the study of organizations. Much behavioral research on
organizations adheres to these commitments, which have
become such a taken-for-granted part of the field that
many researchers follow them without knowing that they
were so stated by Cyert and March.
The process-oriented models described in the second
commitment are most apparent in learning theory and
evolutionary economics, as we will discuss later. In these
fields, much theorizing concerns how certain events and
experiences set in motion processes of decision making,
routine development, or routine selection that change
organizational behavior. Much organizational research
is structurally oriented, however, and examines effects
of structures such as top management teams, organiza-
tional networks, or institutions on organizational behav-
iors and outcomes. Despite the focus on structure, the
process commitment lives on as a requirement to use
descriptions of organizational processes to justify effects
of structures on organizations. In modern organizational
theory, predictions without a process justification are
seen as less legitimate and less theoretically satisfying
than those that specify the underlying theoretical mech-
anism. Readers often examine the process explanation
of a structural theory in order to judge its credibility.
This is an important part of the legacy of A Behavioral
Theory of the Firm.
The close linking to empirical observations described
in the third commitment has become an integral part of
the methodology of organizational theory. The detailed
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS 339
case studies in A Behavioral Theory were highly effec-
tive in revealing the decision-making processes used.
Along with other early case studies of organizations
(Selznick 1949, Gouldner 1954), they showed how much
researchers could gain from being close to the phe-
nomenon, reporting the evidence rigorously instead of
summarizing it, and drawing general implications from
observation of specific organizational processes. Modern
qualitative research is a more developed version of this
approach to theory building, and has a central role in
the field (e.g., see Bechky 2006, Feldman 2004, Kellogg
et al. 2006 for recent examples). It owes some of its
current legitimacy to A Behavioral Theory of the Firm.
The simulation models in A Behavioral Theory of the
Fir m have also inspired much later work. Even simple
process models can have implications that are nonobvi-
ous and difficult to derive, and simulations offer a key
tool for understanding the properties of process mod-
els. This potential has been used in many classical and
highly cited simulation studies inspired by A Behavioral
Theory (Axelrod 1984, Cohen et al. 1972, March 1991),
as well as modern studies in the same tradition (Carley
1992, Siggelkow and Rivkin 2005, Gavetti 2005) or from
different theoretical perspectives (Carroll and Harrison
1994, Carroll et al. 2006). Modern simulation studies
owe much of their legitimacy to A Behavioral Theory of
the Firm.
To a modern reader, the weakest part of the empir-
ical work in A Behavioral Theory of the Firm is the
quantitative testing of propositions drawn from the case
studies, theorizing, and simulations. This should not be
surprising when taking into account that the book was
published in 1963, approximately two decades before
the diffusion of rigorous methods for studying change in
organizational theory (e.g., Tuma and Hannan 1984) and
the development of techniques for dealing with issues
such as selection biases and endogeneity that are often
present in field data. The book was simply ahead of its
time. Quantitative work such as the comparison of sim-
ulation results to actual data on market shares of two
duopolists (Cyert and March 1963, pp. 92–93) clearly
showed an ambition to pair process models with quan-
titative testing. Work using event history or panel-data
analysis to study causes and effects of organizational
change has become a significant part of modern organi-
zational research (e.g., Amburgey et al. 1993, Darr et al.
1995, Haunschild and Sullivan 2002), and represents a
direct continuation of A Behavioral Theory of the Firm.
Cyert and March (1963) thus made a general method-
ological point and provided specific examples. The
general methodological point was that theory should
model organizational processes, and should be generated
through systematic observation of processes in actual
organizations. One component of this point is that orga-
nizational theory should not oversimplify. Although par-
simony is needed in theory building, parsimony that
throws out basic insights—like replacing a process
model with a maximization assumption—can be harm-
ful. The broad acceptance of this point and frequent
reference of A Behavioral Theory of the Firm sug-
gest that the book is an important rallying point for
researchers interested in organizational processes. The
specific examples have also left a clear mark on the
literature through the legitimizing effect on qualitative
research and simulation work, as well as a set of ideas
on how to quantitatively model organizational processes,
which is currently very important.
A Behavioral Foundation for Theory
A Behavioral Theory of the Firm made a number of con-
crete theoretical advances through proposing novel con-
cepts and mechanisms. Work directly descendent from
A Behavioral Theory is characterized by its use of many
of these simultaneously and by high fidelity to the orig-
inal formulation. An important part of the legacy of
the book, however, is that these theoretical advances
have found their way into the foundation of many other
theories, where they have been combined with new con-
cepts and mechanisms to produce new theory. This pro-
vision of raw material for theory building is the reason
why Cyert and March (1963) is a foundational piece not
just for specific research traditions, but also for orga-
nizational theory as a field. Below we review selected
mechanisms from A Behavioral Theory of the Firm, and
examine their effects on major research traditions. We
stress that this is not intended to be a complete review,
which would be unwieldy because of the sheer magni-
tude of the effect that Cyert and March (1963) has had
on the organizational research.
Key concepts and mechanisms discussed in A Behav-
ioral Theory of the Firm are bounded rationality,
problemistic search, the dominant coalition, standard
operating procedures, and slack search. Bounded ratio-
nality was known from earlier work (Simon 1952, March
and Simon 1958), but its implications for organizational
decision making was developed more fully in A Behav-
ioral Theory of the Firm. Problemistic search started
from the model of individual motivation in March and
Simon (1958) but became a model of organizational
reactions to low performance. The theory of the dom-
inant coalition explains how the organization can have
goals despite the different interests of its participants.
The theory of standard operating procedures and routine
behavior providing organizational regularity made orga-
nizational routines a central concept of organizational
theory. The theory of slack search and innovation is an
account of why organizations sometimes develop new
products, technologies, or practices even when they are
not solving specific problems, which complements the
theory of problemistic search. These theoretical concepts
and mechanisms, and subprocesses discussed in their
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
340 Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS
development, have been used in a number of organiza-
tional theories, including institutional theory, population
ecology, and organizational economics.
Institutional theory explains how the firm adapts to
a symbolic environment of cognitions and expectations
and a regulatory environment of rules and sanctions.
This theory has a very active empirical research tradi-
tion (see Scott 2001 for a review). The theory assumes
bounded rationality; additional key borrowings from the
behavioral theory of the firm are uncertainty avoidance,
loose coupling, and decision making under ambiguity
(Meyer and Rowan 1977, DiMaggio and Powell 1983).
As a result of this borrowing, some branches of institu-
tional theory, such as the highly active research stream
on the diffusion of institutions (reviewed in Strang and
Soule 1998), have predictions that are consistent with
the theory of interorganizational learning (Levitt and
March 1988, Greve 1996). The theory of the diffusion
of institutions is built on the concept of mimetic iso-
morphism as a response to uncertainty, which DiMaggio
and Powell (1983, p. 151) saw as an inexpensive form
of problemistic search. Later work has established this
connection empirically by showing that mimetic behav-
ior is strengthened by high uncertainty (Haunschild
1994). Extensions to this theory are now being made
by researchers examining the interaction between prob-
lemistic search spurred by own failures and mimetic pro-
cesses (Rao et al. 2001, Chuang and Baum 2003).
Population ecology explains the effects of legitimacy
and competition on the evolution of industries and the
life chances of individual firms, and newer treatments
also examine how attempts to change firms in response
to competition affect firm survival and performance.
Population ecology has a very strong record of empiri-
cal research (see reviews in Hannan and Freeman 1989,
Carroll and Hannan 2000). The original formulation of
population ecology saw it as an alternative to theories of
firm adaptation such as the behavioral theory of the firm
(Hannan and Freeman 1977), but population ecology has
increasingly adopted concepts from the behavioral the-
ory of the firm in studies of the causes and consequences
of change. Important concepts from Cyert and March
(1963) that have been directly incorporated into newer
ecological theory are satisficing, competence traps, and
myopic search (e.g., Miner et al. 1990, Amburgey et al.
1993, Barnett and Hansen 1996, Baum and Singh 1996,
Dobrev et al. 2003). These concepts have helped popula-
tion ecology scholars and learning scholars start a stream
of research integrating concerns of learning and compe-
tition in models of organizational change, performance,
and survival (e.g., Ingram and Baum 1997, Barnett and
Freeman 2001). Another active strand of research that
blends population ecology and learning theory examines
how learning from previous experience in other firms
affects the success of new entrepreneurial ventures (e.g.,
Carroll et al. 1996, Phillips 2002).
In political science, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm
has been important for research on organizational effects
on political decision making and public administration.
Its ideas of bounded rationality, search, and organiza-
tional routines are central in Allison’s (1971) analysis
of the Cuban missile crisis. Later work used this theory
in combination with theory of political decision mak-
ing and gaps between decisions and action (Brunsson
1989), and theory of decision processes with decoupling
of problems, solutions, and participants (Cohen et al.
1972, March and Olsen 1989). As a result, the attention
pattern of policy makers and the generation of agendas
and alternatives has become a central part of scholar-
ship in public policy (Kingdon 1984), and recent work
builds on these ideas to explain the behaviors of pub-
lic organizations (e.g., Christensen and Lægreid 2003,
Olsen 2003).
Organizational economics is a growing subfield of
economic theory that has a strong interest in explain-
ing the boundaries of the firm (Coase 1937, Williamson
1975), but has also expanded into exploration of a num-
ber of related issues on organizational structure, coor-
dination, decision rights, and internal behaviors such as
influence activities and politics. The emphasis on the
boundaries of the firm is different from that of learn-
ing theory, but other theoretical interests are shared.
Moreover, there are overlaps in basic ideas that are not
always explicitly acknowledged, but suggest an intel-
lectual debt to March and Simon (1958) and Cyert
and March (1963). First, bounded rationality is held as
important by many authors, although the details of how
it is incorporated into the theory differ (Radner 1996,
Williamson 1985). Second, the emphasis on conflicts of
interest and internal negotiations matches the theory of
goals in Cyert and March (1963) and its precursor state-
ment (March 1962), and is central in game theoretic
treatments of organizations (Grossman and Hart 1982,
Holmstrom and Milgrom 1989, Milgrom and Roberts
1988). Organizational economics has other influences
as well, and is affected by constraints imposed by the
need for tractable models, so the models differ from
Cyert and March (1963) in important details. For exam-
ple, decision making with satisficing and search for
alternatives is usually not considered, and models often
impose a principal-agent structure with no exit option for
the players. These changes give the models a narrower
scope than the Cyert-March dominant-coalition model
where all participants bargain and the March-Simon
inducements-contributions model where participants also
consider the choice of exiting the organization. The rate
of progress in this area is so rapid, however, that models
capturing additional learning theoretical concepts may
be in the works already.
Two Behavioral Research Traditions
A Behavioral Theory of the Firm has also given rise to
research that follows the original theory more closely
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS 341
than the examples given above. This work is primarily
found in evolutionary economics and in organizational
learning theory. Evolutionary economics examines orga-
nizational and industrial evolution processes based on
a model of firms as routine-based agents that change
incrementally through search rather than as a result of
optimization (Nelson and Winter 1982). This theory has
a very active tradition of modeling the consequences of
these behavioral assumptions for industrial evolution, as
well as empirical work on routine and capability changes
in organizations (representative work is found in Dosi
et al. 2000). Much attention is spent on the issue of how
organizations come to develop heterogeneous sets of
capabilities and sustain (or modify) them over time. The
theory assumes bounded rationality in decision making
and views routines as a stabilizing factor in firm behav-
iors and search processes as a source of changes.
One branch of research in evolutionary economics is
empirical studies on the origin, modification, and trans-
mission of organizational routines. Field studies have
shown that routines are created and stabilized as a result
of problem-solving activities and changes in the work-
load, and that organizations handle increases in work-
load through greater specialization of roles and increased
coordination activities (e.g., Adler 1993, Narduzzo et al.
2000). Once formed, routines developed in one part
of the organization are transferable—with some errors
and modifications—and can be put into use when the
organization expands or incorporates new units (Argote
et al. 1990, Epple et al. 1996, Florida and Kenney
2000, Winter and Szulanski 2001). Acquisitions can also
extend the capabilities of the acquiring firm (Karim and
Mitchell 2000).
The path dependence of routines is an important
implication of evolutionary theorizing and empirical
research, and many have studied how path dependence
of routines leads to persistent heterogeneity of capa-
bilities in organizational populations and difficulties in
adapting to invasions by new routine sets (such as
new technologies). Persistently heterogeneous capabili-
ties have been shown to be the result of gradual learn-
ing and resource-allocation processes (Helfat 1997) that
result in stable firm differences in performance (Hen-
derson and Cockburn 1994), and to be determined more
strongly by the history of the focal firm than by its envi-
ronment (Kogut and Zander 2000). Indeed, the flip side
of the strong relation between firms and capabilities is
firm difficulties in adapting to environmental changes
that call for replacement of capabilities (Tushman and
Anderson 1986, Henderson and Clark 1990).
The path dependence of routines also has important
implications for firm adaptation to stable environments.
Many simulation studies have shown that the incremen-
tal changes that would result from path-dependent capa-
bilities do not reliably help organizations to find optimal
capability sets based on immediate performance feed-
back (e.g., Levinthal and March 1981, Herriot et al.
1985, Dosi and Kaniovski 1994). This has led to inves-
tigations of alternative mechanisms for adaptation such
as firm search strategies that are partly resistant to local
feedback (Gavetti and Levinthal 2000, Gavetti 2005).
Organizational learning theory uses the concepts and
mechanisms of A Behavioral Theory of the Firm directly,
and has added a number of new research questions
and learning mechanisms. Research on intraorganiza-
tional, organizational, and interorganizational learning
share many common elements. The first focuses on the
learning by groups, departments, or units that constitute
organizations; the second focuses on learning at the level
of the overall organization; and the third takes special
interest in the routes, mechanisms, and effects of learn-
ing from other organizations. Research on both intraor-
ganizational and organizational learning examines how
organizational units learn from experience. Interpreting
organizational experience and drawing appropriate infer-
ences from it can be challenging (Levitt and March
1988, March et al. 1991), which has led researchers
to examine both the nature of the learning processes
involved and their potential for producing outcomes that
are unfavorable to the organization (March 1981, 1991).
Similarly, an important question in interorganizational
learning is the extent to which the learning processes
have biases that harm individual organizations or organi-
zational populations (Miner and Anderson 1999, Miner
et al. 1999).
Many reviewers discuss the branches of learning
theory on intraorganizational learning (Argote and
Ophir 2002), organizational learning (Schulz 2002), and
interorganizational learning (Ingram 2002) separately
because of some differences in emphasis, although these
branches have a large set of shared assumptions. How-
ever, there are two important links between levels of
analyses that suggest a need to take a unified view of
these branches. First, similar learning mechanisms may
be found at multiple levels of analysis. For example,
myopic search may be behind imitation both within and
across organizations, as may be seen through the simi-
larities of diffusion processes in these two contexts (cf.
Levin et al. 1987, 1992). Second, a single learning pro-
cess can have consequences at multiple levels in orga-
nizations. For example, in a study of surgical teams,
Reagans et al. (2005) found that learning occurred at the
level of individuals, teams, and the organization. Current
research should thus aim to understand commonalities
and differences in learning at these different levels.
A current trend in research on learning from expe-
rience at all levels of analysis is taking a more fine-
grained approach to characterizing experience. Cyert
and March (1963) analyzed particular dimensions of
experience, such as whether it was above or below
aspiration levels. Current work extends the dimensions
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
342 Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS
of experience investigated. For example, Haunschild
and Sullivan (2002) examined how experience hetero-
geneity affects learning processes and outcomes and
McKendrick (2001) examined how the social structure of
an industry caused heterogeneity in learning outcomes.
The learning processes spurred by the experience of
competing with other organizations have been the topic
of many studies (e.g., Barnett and Hansen 1996, Barnett
1997, Ingram and Baum 1997, Baum and Ingram 1998).
Conversely, collaboration with other organizations also
triggers learning processes that have been examined
extensively (Barkema et al. 1997, Larsson et al. 1998,
Gulati 1999, Gulati and Gargiulo 1999).
Another trend in studies of learning from experi-
ence is analyzing how the organizational context inter-
acts with experience to affect learning processes and
outcomes (Argote and Todorova 2007). Current work
extends Cyert and March’s (1963) focus on aspects of
the context such as the extent of organizational slack to
other dimensions of the context, including the organiza-
tion’s structure (Sorenson 2003) or culture (Edmondson
1999, Bunderson and Sutcliff 2003). For example, Kane
et al. (2005) found that a contextual dimension affected
organizational learning: Groups that shared a superordi-
nate social identity were more likely to learn from each
other than units lacking an overarching social identity.
How experience is captured and encoded in organiza-
tional memory is an important topic generating interest
among researchers of organizational learning at differ-
ent levels of analysis. Research on two components of
organizational memory or repositories of organizational
knowledge is particularly active. First, researchers are
examining how organizational experience is encoded in
organizational routines (e.g., see Cohen and Bacdayan
1994, Feldman 2004) or rules (March et al. 2000) as well
as how that knowledge interacts with knowledge embed-
ded in individuals. Second, researchers are analyzing the
embeddedness of organizational experience in transac-
tive memory systems (Wegner 1986), or the knowledge
of who knows what (Brandon and Hollingshead 2004,
Lewis et al. 2005, Liang et al. 1995), and the effect of
those memory systems on organizational performance.
In addition to work on organizational memory, research
examines its converse—organizational forgetting or the
decay of organizational knowledge (e.g., Argote et al.
1990, Benkard 2000).
How organizational units learn from the experience
of other units is a very active research area. Levitt and
March (1988) argued that not only do organizations learn
from their own experience, they also learn from the
experience of other units. Researchers of organizational
learning test this proposition empirically by examining
how and when organizational units learn from the expe-
rience of other units. This form of learning is often
referred to as knowledge transfer (e.g., see Darr et al.
1995, Schulz 2001). Research in this area examines the
mechanisms or processes through which transfer occurs
and the conditions that facilitate or impede it. One highly
active research area involves examining how social net-
works affect knowledge transfer (Hansen 1999, Reagans
and McEvily 2003). Much work has also examined the
learning processes that lead to interorganizational diffu-
sion of innovations (e.g., Greve 1996, Haunschild and
Miner 1997, Kraatz 1998). Related to the work on trans-
fer is research on absorptive capacity, defined as the
ability of organizations to incorporate external knowl-
edge (Cohen and Levinthal 1990). Although interorga-
nizational networks and other social structures affect
the flows of information to organizations, their ability
to interpret, apply, and build on this information also
affects their ability to convert available external informa-
tion into internal organizational knowledge. Absorptive
capacity is currently a very active research tradition with
excellent empirical support (e.g., Lane et al. 2001, Tsai
2001, Jansen et al. 2005).
Some Behavioral Hypotheses
A Behavioral Theory of the Firm contains a number of
hypotheses and theoretical mechanisms that yield new
hypotheses. Although these have not been afforded equal
attention in subsequent research, there are some dis-
tinct research traditions that directly build on A Behav-
ioral Theory of the Firm. Of these, we will discuss
work on routines, problemistic search, and slack search.
The theory of standard operating procedures in Cyert
and March (1963) specified that organizational behav-
ior has a high component of procedure following, which
includes rules for performing tasks and handling infor-
mation. Rules offer simplification and standardization,
and, used flexibly enough, can also handle variation.
This theory influenced Nelson and Winter’s (1982) the-
ory of routines, which has become influential both as a
component of evolutionary economics theory and as a
research topic for strategy scholars interested in orga-
nizational capabilities (e.g., Kogut and Zander 1992,
Teece et al. 1997). The role of routines in explaining the
development of organizational capabilities can be seen
through multiple routes. First, learning-curve research
has investigated outcomes such as costs and quality,
showing gradual improvement over time within produc-
tion establishments, but also transfer effects consistent
with imperfect observation and learning of routines by
outsiders (Argote et al. 1990, Levin 2001). Second, firm
capabilities grow as a function of (relevant) experience
in a way that suggests gradual fine-tuning of routines
(Levinthal and Myatt 1994, King and Tucci 2002, Zollo
et al. 2002). Given these findings, an interest in more
direct observation of how routines are developed and
transferred is understandable.
Direct observation of routines has been done in a num-
ber of studies, including work showing how routines
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS 343
change as a result of external influences such as new
technologies (Barley 1986, 1990) or new team mem-
bers (Kane et al. 2005). Because routines are so central
to organizational functioning, large-scale replacement of
routines is a complex endeavor that is done at different
speeds depending on the group level of agreement with
the new routines and encouragement of experimentation
(Edmondson et al. 2001, Pisano et al. 2001). Organi-
zations handling frequent routine changes may develop
routines for changing routines (Adler et al. 1999). Even
stable organizational functioning requires flexible use of
routines, as variation in the inputs given to routines may
require switching among alternative routines or even
development of new routines (Pentland 1992, Feldman
2000). At a higher level of analysis, the routine compo-
sition of organizational populations changes as organi-
zations select routine sets through their own experience
or through interpretation of external events (Anderson
1999, Miner et al. 1999). Although learning of routines
occurs quite naturally, there is still substantial variation
in the routines used by different organizations engaged
in competition, leaving the organizations that can find
and maintain better routines with a competitive advan-
tage (Knott 2001, 2003).
The theory of aspiration levels, performance feed-
back, and problemistic search in Cyert and March (1963)
directly leads to empirical predictions. However, it took
15 years before the first empirical test of these pre-
dictions based on quantitative methods appeared (i.e.,
Manns and March 1978), which seems to have been
because the predictions are not cross-sectional, but rather
predict how a firm will change its behaviors given its
level of performance compared with managerial aspi-
ration levels. A particularly difficult problem was the
estimation of the aspiration levels, which the theory
predicted to be a function of recent performance, past
performance levels (historical aspiration level), and the
recent performance of other firms (social aspiration
level). As a result, empirical tests required data col-
lection approaches and analytical methods that did not
see widespread use in management theory until the late
1980s. After these methodological obstacles were over-
come, the pace of research on aspiration levels and prob-
lemistic search has increased to the point where it is one
of the most active research streams on strategic change
in firms.
Two important contributions helped start empirical
research on this subject. A study of aspiration level
updating showed that decision makers followed the pre-
dictions made in Cyert and March (1963) and demon-
strated a method for direct investigation of aspiration
levels (Lant 1992). A study on firm risk taking showed
how the predictions of aspiration level updating and
problemistic search in Cyert and March (1963) could
be applied along with prospect theory (Kahneman and
Tversky 1979) to explain intertemporal variation in firm
risk taking (Bromiley 1991). The latter contribution was
important because work on firm risk taking has become
a sizable empirical research stream with studies contrast-
ing predictions from finance theory with either prospect
theory, the behavioral theory of the firm, or both. A
recent review reported many empirical studies on this
topic and good support for the behavioral theory of the
firm (Nickel and Rodriguez 2002).
Although the theory in Cyert and March (1963) can
be applied to risk taking, it most directly predicts organi-
zational search and change. Problemistic search implies
that organizational aspiration levels adapt to the past
experience of the focal organization and those of com-
parable organizations. Once organizational performance
falls below the aspiration level, search for solutions will
occur and organizational changes become more likely.
Because problemistic search is myopic, the changes
will likely occur near the apparent problem or in areas
that the organization has recently changed. Much work
has shown that performance below the aspiration lev-
els affects outcomes such as the overall strategy (Lant
et al. 1992, Miller and Chen 1994, Audia et al. 2000)
as well as specific actions such as market entry (Greve
1998), investments (Greve 2003b), research and develop-
ment (Bolton 1993), and interfirm collaborations (Baum
et al. 2005). Some studies have examined interactions
of problemistic search and contextual factors such as
the experiences of others (Chuang and Baum 2003) and
organizational inertia (Audia and Greve 2006).
The theory of slack search has also seen much
empirical testing, but the full extent of this work is
difficult to assess because it has not been reviewed
recently. A Behavioral Theory proposed that organiza-
tional slack reduces conflict and increases innovative-
ness. It is the latter proposition that has seen most
work. An early review paper found nine studies with
fairly weak results (Damanpour 1991), but later this
research stream has been strengthened by work mod-
ifying the theory to propose that organizational slack
has an inverted U-shaped relation with organizational
innovativeness because excess amounts of slack reduce
the managerial discipline needed to convert innovation
efforts into product launches (Nohria and Gulati 1996).
With this modification, the theory predicts innovations
quite well. Others have proposed that strategy-innovation
fit affects innovation-launch decisions (Dougherty 1992)
and that problemistic search is more effective when slack
search has generated a buffer of innovation develop-
ment processes (Greve 2003a). Despite these suggested
moderating effects, there are still many studies investi-
gating the direct effects of organizational slack on inno-
vations, and some have found strong supportive results
(Geiger and Cashen 2002). Research on how organiza-
tional slack affects innovations is currently in an active
phase, and has moved past the point of proving an effect
and onward to investigating the conditions under which
the effect is strongest.
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
344 Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS
A Behavioral Agenda
The articles in this special issue suggest future research
directions that are likely to advance our understanding of
particular research questions developed in A Behavioral
Theory of the Firm. In this section we discuss more gen-
eral approaches that we believe will advance the agenda
of A Behavioral Theory and thereby increase our under-
standing of organizations.
The Cyert and March book aimed to open up the
“black box” of the internal workings of organizations. It
departed from models prevalent in economics that char-
acterized firm decisions as being made by monolithic,
unitary actors. Decisions in organizations were instead
seen as produced by collections of individuals with dif-
ferent interests, information, and identities. These dif-
ferences led to interesting phenomena, such as conflict
and subgoal optimization, which had important impli-
cations for firm behavior and performance. The internal
processes and structures of the firm that were described
so richly in the Cyert and March book are not developed
in depth in many contemporary approaches to organiza-
tions. Much of contemporary organizational theory such
as population ecology or institutional theory focuses on
external relationships between organizations and their
environments, and some treatments in those traditions
have moved closer to models of an organization as a
unitary actor.
By contrast, the Cyert and March book not only
examines the internal workings of organizations but
also examines the articulation between the organiza-
tion and its external environment. For example, organi-
zations have multiple goals, including goals that place
them in contact with external events such as market
competition. Organizational aspiration levels are based
not only on internal comparisons to past performance
but also on external comparisons to competitors. Search
is conducted internally in the organization, but also
affected by its relations to external actors. We strongly
encourage a resurgence of interest in the internal struc-
tures and processes of organizations to complement the
progress that has been made in understanding their exter-
nal relationships.
We also encourage more explicit acknowledgement
that many decisions in organizations are made by stand-
ing groups, such as top-management teams or boards of
directors, or by looser collections of individuals, such
as Cyert and March’s dominant coalition. Much work
in economics (see Marschak and Radner’s 1972 theory
of teams for one exception) treats the firm as if it is an
individual making a decision. Although there was a rich
body of research on group decision making in psychol-
ogy (e.g., see Davis 1973, Hinsz et al. 1997, Kerr et al.
1996, Stasser and Titus 1985), that work has primarily
been conducted in the laboratory where small groups
come together for brief periods and members do not
have a history of interaction or exist in a larger social
context. We encourage a greater focus on understanding
organizational decision making. This focus will require
theory that incorporates the social processes and contex-
tual factors that affect organizational decisions as well
as an understanding of how decisions made by different
groups or individuals within a firm combine to produce
organizational actions.
The Organization Science Special Issue
Papers for the special issue were due in May 2005. After
an initial round of reviews, authors who were encour-
aged to revise and resubmit their work to the special
issue were invited to a conference at Carnegie Mellon
University in May 2006. The conference provided an
opportunity for authors to obtain feedback about their
work and for the editors to identify common themes
in the manuscripts. The conference was funded by the
Carnegie Bosch Institute for Applied Studies in Interna-
tional Management and by the Center for Organizational
Learning, Innovation, and Performance at Carnegie Mel-
lon University. We gratefully acknowledge the support
of these centers and especially thank Johannes Elling,
Eva Maria Höller-Cladders, and Michael Trick, the cur-
rent and former presidents of the Carnegie Bosch Insti-
tute. Colleagues from Carnegie Mellon commented at
the conference on the impact of the Cyert and March
book on various fields of management. We would like
to thank several scholars for their insightful remarks and
contributions to the conference: Jared Cohen, Ilker Bay-
bars, Robyn Dawes, Yuji Ijiri, George Lowenstein, Stan-
ley Zin, and especially Margaret Cyert. A high point of
the conference was Dean Kenneth Dunn’s announcement
that an auditorium at the Tepper School of Business (for-
merly the Graduate School of Industrial Administration)
at Carnegie Mellon University would be named in honor
of James G. March.
After another round of review, the special issue edi-
tors selected papers that exemplify the high standards
of A Behavioral Theory and its broad influence, for
inclusion in the special issue. The authors are affili-
ated with institutions in different disciplines in Europe,
Asia, and North America, reflecting the interdisciplinary
and international impact of the book. The papers use
different methods including quantitative field studies,
qualitative case studies, laboratory experiments, and
simulations. The manuscripts build on the concepts
and hypotheses developed in A Behavioral Theory of
the Firm.
Consistent with our review of the literature, research
on aspiration levels is well-represented in this special
issue. Three manuscripts examine how performance rel-
ative to aspiration levels affects organizational behavior
and performance. Harris and Bromiley (2007) extend the
behavioral theory of the firm to a new domain: finan-
cial misrepresentation. Based on an analysis of finan-
cial restatements identified by the U.S. Government
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS 345
Accounting Office as resulting from accounting irregu-
larities, Harris and Bromiley find that top-management
incentive compensation and low organizational perfor-
mance relative to aspirations increase the likelihood of
financial statement misrepresentations. The theory is an
extension of the mechanism of problemistic search to
include misconduct as a potential outcome as well as
the usual legitimate approaches to problem solving, and
the findings present troubling implications for currently
popular incentive schemes.
Baum and Dahlin (2007) analyze how organizations’
learning from their own and others’ experience is condi-
tioned by their performance relative to aspirations, which
integrates the previously separate literatures on learn-
ing curves and problemistic search. Based on an analy-
sis of a longitudinal data set on accident costs in U.S.
freight railroads, the researchers find that as performance
deviates from aspiration levels, organizations benefit less
from their own experience and more from the experience
of other firms in the industry. Baum and Dahlin suggest
that their findings indicate that performance near aspi-
ration levels leads to local search, whereas performance
away from aspirations fosters nonlocal search.
Park (2007) investigates how performance relative to
aspirations affects the choice of strategic positions in the
U.S. food-processing industry. He finds that firms are
more likely to position themselves close to other firms
when their performance is below aspiration levels, and
that they choose high-performing firms as targets of imi-
tation. The second finding is particularly novel because
it shows that high performance is more likely to cause
a firm to be seen as a role model, and hence to be imi-
tated, than it is likely to cause the firm to be seen as a
strong competitor that should be avoided. Thus, not only
do these papers extend the predictions of A Behavioral
Theory of the Firm to new outcomes, they also elabo-
rate the theory of how and when performance relative
to aspirations affects organizational behavior and perfor-
mance.
The next paper in this special issue builds on another
concept central to A Behavioral Theory: the concept of
search. Winter, Cattani, and Dorsch (2007) use compu-
tational models to examine hypotheses advanced in A
Behavioral Theory of the Firm about the interplay of
local and nonlocal search and the consequences of cog-
nition versus local feedback. The Winter et al. (2007).
paper advances the use of simulation, a tool introduced
to the organizational sciences by A Behavioral Theory.
The researchers demonstrate that a search strategy that
combines the guidance of local search with a moder-
ate level of nonlocal “obsession” is advantageous when
searching a “rugged landscape.”
Gavetti and Rivkin (2007) examine the strategic
changes in the internet portal firm Lycos, and use their
observations to compare the positional and evolution-
ary perspectives on strategy and to propose a middle
ground. They find that distinguishing different forms of
search is important to understand strategic changes, and
they argue that the theory of search should be extended
to include the effects of cognitive representations and
strategic information sensors. They also develop propo-
sitions on how search patterns change as an industry
evolves.
The next three papers in the special issue build more
on the general principles of A Behavioral Theory of the
Fir m and less on the specific propositions than the first
five papers. Moore, Oesch, and Zietsma (2007) use the
concept of myopic search to develop and test hypotheses
about market-entry decisions. Based on an analysis of
market-entry decisions by entrepreneurs and by partici-
pants in an experiment, the researchers find that potential
entrants base their decisions on evaluations of their own
competence and neglect the competence of competitors,
which leads to an egocentric bias in entry decisions.
Jacobides examines the role of organizational structure
in search behavior in his analysis of how Greece almost
went to war with Turkey in 1996 over uninhabited islets.
Jacobides (2007) shows how organizational structure
contributed to the escalation and suggests that hierarchy
can be an antidote to such escalation. Pitelis argues that
although the theories of Cyert and March (1963) and
Penrose (1959) have differences, they also have many
similarities. Pitelis integrates the two theories, with par-
ticular attention to the concepts of slack resources and
intrafirm conflict.
Because a major goal of the special issue was to
take stock of the impact of A Behavioral Theory of the
Fir m, we include several Perspective essays that chart
the impact of the work on different subfields. Dosi and
Marengo (2007) discuss the influence of A Behavioral
Theory of the Firm on evolutionary economics. Cohen
(2007) describes how A Behavioral Theory builds on
Simon’s Administrate Behavior, which moved decision
making to the foreground in the analysis of organiza-
tional heavier and relegated concepts such as habit and
emotion to the background. Augier and Prietula (2007)
focus on the development and the impact of the com-
putational model in A Behavioral Theory of the Firm.
Gavetti, Levinthal, and Ocasio (2007) provide a neo-
Carnegie theoretical approach that incorporates devel-
opments since the initial publication of the Cyert and
March book, including an open systems perspective and
a more embedded characterization of organizations, as
well as recent findings in the study of cognition. Finally,
we are delighted to have a contribution from James G.
March, coauthor of A Behavioral Theory of the Firm.
Jim, thank you for developing A Behavioral Theory of
the Firm and for your remarkable contributions to our
understanding of organizations. We hope that this special
issue advances a behavioral theory of the firm.
Argote and Greve: Introduction and Impact
346 Organization Science 18(3), pp. 337–349, © 2007 INFORMS
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Carnegie Bosch Institute for Applied
Studies in International Management and the Center for Orga-
nizational Learning, Innovation, and Performance at Carnegie
Mellon University for their support. The authors also thank Jen-
nifer Kukawa for extraordinary assistance for the conference
and the special issue.
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