Recombination also comes up in Kauffman s N/K model. For Kauffman, sexual mating or reproduction allows a kind of "God's Eye" peek at the peaks (Kauffman, 1995). The genetic recombinations that result from sex between organisms at different locations on a landscape allows the adapting "population" to "look at" the regions between the parental genotypes. In this way recombination allows the adapting population to make use of large scale features of the landscapes to find high peaks. In fact, Kauffman found in his N/K landscapes that populations using mutation and recombination as well as selection improve far more rapidly than those using only mutation and selection (Kauffman, 1995).

If the fitness landscape looks like the Alps, then the peaks carry mutual information about where to find high peaks: they are nearby! Moreover, if parents are high up on the peaks, then the kids will have a greater chance to start out higher. Yet, recombination can actually be harmful on a totally random landscape since if parents are at local peaks, recombination can lead progeny to be "dropped off" in a place with lower fitness. Furthermore, when a search is merely random with no clues about upward trends, the only way to find the highest pinnacle is to search the whole space.

Recombination is going on in organizations in an unprecedented manner with the accelerating pace of mergers and acquisitions. Previously competitive organizations are now joined and the frequent issue concerns how these previously separate, even hostile entities can possible work together. Whereas the traditional approach might be to impose a new structure or plan or working procedures on the newly merged system, an approach informed by genetic algorithms or the N/K model would see this recombination and the potential conflict it might engender as a great opportunity for the emergence of new organizational practices and directions (see Goldstein, "Leadership and Emergence" in the File Cabinet section). Then the intervention would not be to dampen differences of opinion but to highlight them, amplify them and allow a more adaptive organizational structure to emerge as a result of the merger.