Performance of Organizational Design Models and Their Impact on Organization Learning

The performance of various organizational structures is an essential parameter in the reengineering of organizations, particularly in the current rapidly changing, competitive and information technology-dependent environment. This situation has generally resulted in a smaller workforce confronted with voluminous information-processing requirements. Naturally, the focus has been on the design of organzations that will support effective and efficient learning processes. This specific study is on the contingency modely by Ouksel et al. (1997) on the impact of organizational structure on organizational learning and performance. It expands the empirical evaluation of the model to test its robustness. This is done by conducting extensive simulations with (a) a larger number of variables in the decision tasks, and (b) a larger set of numbers for each of the numeric variables, than has been used in the past. Overall, the validity of previous results achieved has been confirmed, but the selection of the most appropriate design, that which will indeed improve learning, is even more nuanced than past studies have concluded.     

Density Delay and Organizational Survival: Computational Models and Empirical Comparisons

Research on the ecological dynamics oforganizational populations has demonstrated that competitiveconditions at the time of founding have enduring effects onorganizational survival. According to ecological theories,organizational life chances are systematically affected by density (the number of organizations in a population) at thetime of founding because the lower resource endowments thatcharacterize organizations appearing in periods of highpopulation density tend to become self-reinforcing, and—over time—amplify differences in mortality rates oforganizations founded under different conditions. However,credible arguments have been offered that could justify both positive and negative effects of the delayed effectsof population density on organizational mortality rates, andreceived empirical research in part reflects this ambiguity.To develop new insight into this issue and to explore theboundaries of received empirical results, in this study wepresent a computational model of organizational evolutionaccording to which the global dynamics of organizationalpopulations emerge from the iteration of simple rules oflocal interaction among individual organizations. We use the synthetic data produced by simulation to estimate eventhistory models of organizational mortality, and compare theparameter estimates with those reported in the most recentempirical studies of actual organizational populations. Theconclusions supported by the model qualify and extendreceived empirical results, and suggest that delayed effectsof density are highly sensitive the details of local structure of connections among members of organizationalpopulations.     

组织文化的演进及其对企业绩效的影响

化作为维持竞争优势的一个源泉，对于企业绩效有着重要的影响作用。本在回顾组织化理论研究演进过程的基础上，探讨了组织化的理论基础，同时分析组织化对企业绩效的影响，分析加强了我们对于企业如何获得良好绩效的理解，奠定了企业取得成功的基础。     

民企家长型领导、组织承诺与组织绩效的关系研究

以广东、广西68家民营企业的159名管理者及员工的调查结果为样本,实证分析了民企家长型领导、组织承诺与组织绩效的关系.研究发现:家长型领导行为中德行领导对组织承诺及组织绩效具有较大程度的影响,仁慈领导能够有效地促进员工组织承诺的提升并改善组织绩效,而威权领导则不利于员工组织承诺的提升.组织承诺在德行领导和仁慈领导与组织绩效的关系中有着积极的中介作用,在威权领导与组织绩效间的关系不明确.     

基于因子分析的组织文化测量

在吸纳了国内外学者研究成果的基础上,设计了组织文化测量量表.通过因子分析,得到了组织文化创新力、凝聚力、领导力、员工定位、绩效定位、分配定位、团队定位七个维度的测量指标,累计七个维度方差得到组织文化强度,由该强度值的大小得知组织文化的强弱.给出了一种测量组织文化的定量方法,解决了实证研究中组织文化测量困难的问题.     

A Model of Obsolescence of Organizational Rules

The phenomenon of obsolescence has found little attention in past research on organizational change. Most research on organizational change has instead been concerned with the opposite of obsolescence, that is, with mechanisms which render organizational structures increasingly persistent. However, everyday experience teaches that organizational structures become outdated as surrounding conditions shift. This article explores obsolescence by means of mathematical modeling and empirical analysis. Obsolescence is conceptualized as a result of flows of conditions in, out, and between two states: consistent conditions and inconsistent conditions. The model predicts that the obsoleteness curve rises with decreasing increments over time. This is tested with empirical data on organizational rule change. The results confirm the obsolescence model. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Simulating Patterns of Organizational Careers

The study of organizational careers of employees developed in the last 20 years into an important branch of social mobility research. However, a major problem in this branch is the presence of many organizational mechanisms, which are theoretical interesting though hard to study simultaneously in the organizational case studies to which the field is restricted. In order to overcome this problem of theoretical complexity and the scarcity of data, a simulation model CLISP is developed that generates career data of employees under controlled conditions. The output of CLISP is a set of data, which is similar to the well known data sets that are obtained from existing organizations. Some examples are given that reflect the usefulness and possibilities of simulation techniques for the study of organizational careers of employees. For instance, the simulation results can provide us with knowledge about the period in which changes in personnel policies—such as Equal Opportunity measures—will have substantialeffects in the measurement techniques which are often applied.     

基于Projection Pursuit-RAGA-NK-GERT的质量绩效提升路径优化——以组织质量特异性免疫和产品生命周期为主导逻辑的解释框架

依据组织免疫和组织质量特异性免疫的相关理论,引入情境变量产品生命周期,构建基于组织质量监视、组织质量防御软要素、组织质量防御硬要素和组织质量记忆的质量绩效提升路径理论框架。使用基于RAGA的投影寻踪模型、适应度景观和NK模型对产品生命周期不同阶段的质量绩效提升路径进行实证分析,实证结果表明:产品生命周期不同阶段有不同的质量绩效提升路径,产品导入期遵循的质量绩效提升路径为组织质量监视→组织质量防御→组织质量记忆,产品成长期遵循的质量绩效提升路径为组织质量防御软要素→组织质量防御硬要素→组织质量监视→组织质量记忆,产品成熟期遵循的质量绩效提升路径为组织质量防御硬要素→组织质量防御软要素→组织质量监视→组织质量记忆,产品衰退期遵循的质量绩效提升路径为组织质量记忆→组织质量监视→组织质量防御。并建立产品生命周期不同阶段质量绩效提升路径优化的GERT网络,优化产品生命周期不同阶段的质量绩效提升路径。     

Towards an Organizational Model of Attitude Change

Building on the growing literature that views organizations as complex adaptive systems, this paper proposes a general model to analyze the relationship between organizational context and attitudes. In particular, we focus on how the system of formal and informal communication channels that characterize an organization and the timing of information flows affect the dynamic process of attitude change. We also use a stylized version of the model to illustrate how the general framework is able to generate insights that are relevant to particular situations.     

领导风格与组织情境的匹配研究:基于模糊专家系统模型

通过构建模糊专家系统模型,研究六类领导风格(愿景型、教练型、关系型、民主型、领跑型和命令型)与四种组织情境要素(组织文化、下属成熟度、领导-下属关系和环境不确定性)的最优匹配。并运用该模型对一家民营服装外贸公司进行了实证分析,发现该公司面临的环境不确定性值较大,而组织文化、下属成熟度和领导-下属关系的值相对较小,领导者采取愿景型领导风格更有利于企业的发展。结论表明了该模型的有效性,弥补了传统研究定性分析的不足,并对领导者根据具体组织情境转变单一的领导风格具有启示作用。     

A Model to Evaluate the Effect of Organizational Adaptation

When an organization's output declines due to either internal changes or changes in its external environment, it needs to adapt. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of different adaptation strategies on organizational performance, an organizational model composed of individual models of a five stage interacting decision maker was designed using an object oriented design approach and implemented as a Colored Petri net. The concept of entropy is used to calculate the total activity value, a surrogate for decision maker workload, based on the functional partition and the adaptation strategy being implemented. The individual decision maker's total activity is monitored, as overloaded decision makers constrain organizational performance. A virtual experiment was conducted; organizations implementing local and global adaptation strategies were compared to a control organization with no adaptation. The level of tolerance of the organization, the workload limit based on the concept of the bounded rationality constraint, was used to determined when a decision maker was overloaded: the limiting effect of the workload on performance. The timeliness of the organization's response was used in order to evaluate organizational output as a function of adaptation strategy.     

Computational organizational network modeling: Strategies and an example

This paper articulates the logic of computational organizational modeling as a strategy for theory construction and testing in the field of organizational communication networks. The paper introduces, Blanche, and objectoriented simulation environment that supports quantitative modeling and analysis of the evolution of organizational networks. Blanche relies on the conceptual primitives of attributes that describe network nodes and links that connect these nodes. Difference equations are used to model the dynamic properties of the network as it changes over time. This paper describes the design of Blanche and how it supports both the process of theory construction, model building and analysis of results. The paper concludes with an empirical example, to test the predictions of a network-based social influence model for the adoption of a new communication technology in the workplace.     

A System Dynamics Model of Planned Organizational Change

This paper suggests that an induction of change program leads to atemporary impairment of organizational performance. A System Dynamics Modelportrays the process of planned organizational change. A set of keyvariables that facilitate or impede change is identified, quantified, andintegrated into the model. Three data sets, reproduced by simulation,demonstrate that the model is internally consistent and empiricallyadequate. The paper discusses theoretical and practical implications of theinitial dip phenomenon in processes of planned change.     

A Dynamic Simulation Comparing Classical and Emergent-Network Models: Organizational Design Implications

In the last decade, organizations have spent more on the creation, transformation, and communication of information than on the production of physical goods. The information age has been ushered in by the widespread assimilation of information and communication technologies. Many contemporary practitioners and organizational theorists predict the demise of the classical organizational design because of its inability to accommodate the sociological change engendered by the information age.The current study advances an emergent-network model of organizational design and compares it to the classical approach through a dynamic simulation of prototypical organizational activities. Organizational activities approximating one year were simulated in each of five organizations under constant baseline conditions and over one hundred experimental design conditions. The emergent network model manifested higher levels of goal attainment, resource utilization, and organizational capacity for accommodating change. These findings suggest that organizations will benefit from conformance to the design principals of the emergent-network model.Bernard D. Hill Jr. earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University. He also holds a Master of Science in Business and a Bachelor of Science in Education. Bernard is currently employed as a Chief Information Officer with the Commonwealth of Virginia. He has held a broad array of technology leadership positions in both the public and private sectors and the academic arena. Bernard was selected as one of Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders for 2002. As CIO for the Virginia Department of Transportation, he also brokered a public-private partnership that won a nationwide Government Technology Leadership Award. This partnership provides security awareness training for employees in Virginia State government, as well as cities, counties, and localities throughout Virginia.Heinz Roland Weistroffer is an Associate Professor of Information Systems in the School of Business at Virginia Commonwealth University. Roland holds a Doctor of Science degree from the Free University Berlin, Germany, and a Master of Arts degree from Duke University. Previous appointments include Chief Research Officer at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Pretoria, South Africa, and Senior Lecturer at the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa. Roland’s current research interests include computer assisted decision support, computer simulation modeling, object oriented modeling, and software engineering. He has published in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, the Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, and Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, among other journals.Peter Aiken is Director of the Institute for Data Research and an Associate Professor of Information Systems at Virginia Commonwealth University. His research has widely explored the area of data engineering and its relationship to systems and business reengineering. He is the author of Data Reverse Engineering and Clive Finkelstein’s co-author of Corporate Information Portals (McGraw-Hill 1996/99). His sixth book is titled XML in Data Management and is co-authored with David Allen. He has held leadership positions with the US Department of Defense and consulted with more than 50 organizations in 14 different counties. His research publications have appeared in the Communications of the ACM, IBM Systems Journal, IEEE Software and many others. He is a member of ACM, and the IEEE (Senior Member). He has been a DAMA International Advisor since 1999 and received their 2001 International Achievement Award. He has lectured internationally on these and related topics.     

高端装备制造企业组织创新演化机制研究——基于混沌理论

以演化视角分析高端装备制造企业组织创新类型和创新演化过程,并基于种群竞争模型,构建企业组织创新演化模型,通过分析模型平衡点稳定性及其演化趋势,发现当创新演化初始点出现在进入鞍点轨线附近时,其微小变化将导致最终演化状态的巨大差别。应用Lyapunov指数法判定高端装备制造企业组织创新演化的混沌性,运用创新演化模型模拟企业组织创新混沌演化过程并分析创新混沌演化规律。研究结果表明:①渐进式创新和激进式创新之间较强的竞争效应是企业组织创新演化进入混沌的一般条件;②鞍点是企业组织创新混沌演化的转折点,在进入鞍点轨线的影响域中,创新演化轨道的断裂位置和跃迁方向敏感依赖于初始条件;③环境变化对激进式创新的压力会增强创新演化的混沌性。     

Communication Networks from the Enron Email Corpus “It's Always About the People. Enron is no Different”

The Enron email corpus is appealing to researchers because it represents a rich temporal record of internal communication within a large, real-world organization facing a severe and survival-threatening crisis. We describe how we enhanced the original corpus database and present findings from our investigation undertaken with a social network analytic perspective. We explore the dynamics of the structure and properties of the organizational communication network, as well as the characteristics and patterns of communicative behavior of the employees from different organizational levels. We found that during the crisis period, communication among employees became more diverse with respect to established contacts and formal roles. Also during the crisis period, previously disconnected employees began to engage in mutual communication, so that interpersonal communication was intensified and spread through the network, bypassing formal chains of communication. The findings of this study provide valuable insight into a real-world organizational crisis, which may be further used for validating or developing theories and dynamic models of organizational crises; thereby leading to a better understanding of the underlying causes of, and response to, organization failure. Jana Diesner is a Research Associate and Linguistic Programmer at the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at the School of Computer Science (CASOS), Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). She received her Masters in Communications from Dresden University of Technology in 2003. She had been a research scholar at the Institute for Complex Engineered System at CMU in 2001 and 2002. Her research combines computational linguistics, social network analysis and computational organization theory. Terrill L. Frantz is a post-doc researcher at the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. His research involves studying the dynamics of organization social-networks and behavior via computer modeling and simulation. He is developing an expertise in workforce integration strategy and policy evaluation during organization mergers. He earned his doctorate (Ed.D. in Organization Change) from Pepperdine University, a MBA from New York University and a BS in Business Administration (Computer Systems Management) from Drexel University. Prior to entering academic research, for nearly 20 years he was a software applications development manager in the global financial services and industrial chemicals industries; most recently as a Vice President in Information Technology at Morgan Stanley in Hong Kong, New York and London. Kathleen M. Carley is a professor at the Institute for Software Research International in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the director of the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS) <http://www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/>, a university wide interdisciplinary center that brings together network analysis, computer science and organization science (www.casos.ece.cmu.edu) and has an associated NSF funded training program for Ph.D. students. She carries out research that combines cognitive science, social networks and computer science to address complex social and organizational problems. Her specific research areas are computational social and organization theory, group, organizational and social adaptation and evolution, social and dynamic network analysis, computational text analysis, and the impact of telecommunication technologies and policy on communication, information diffusion, disease contagion and response within and among groups particularly in disaster or crisis situations.     

组织惯例演化的博弈分析

随着全球经济系统的日趋复杂和快速变化,持续性变革已经成为企业生存和发展的内在需要.组织惯例作为组织行为的基本要素和组织能力的载体,可以反映企业内在的深层变革.运用生物学隐喻,深入剖析了企业演化的机制;并在此基础上,运用演化博弈模型对组织惯例演化的路径选择进行了模拟分析;最后探讨了组织惯例演化的主要影响因素,并通过案例研究,对演化博弈模型进行了例证.     

Institutional Logics from the Aggregation of Organizational Networks: Operational Procedures for the Analysis of Counted Data

We address some problems of network aggregation that are central to organizational studies. We show that concepts of network equivalence (including generalizations and special cases of structural equivalence) are relevant to the modeling of the aggregation of social categories in cross-classification tables portraying relations within an organizational field (analogous to one-mode networks). We extend our results to model the dual aggregation of social identities and organizational practices (an example of a two-mode network). We present an algorithm to accomplish such dual aggregation. Within the formal and quantitative framework that we present, we emphasize a unified treatment of (a) aggregation on the basis of structural equivalence (invariance of actors within equivalence sets), (b) the study of variation in relations between structurally equivalent sets, and (c) the close connections between aggregation within organizational networks and multi-dimensional modeling of organizational fields.     

Making Organizational Learning Operational: Implications from Learning Classifier Systems

The concepts of organizational learning in organization and management science cover a very wide range of organization-related activities in organization. Since socially situated intelligence is one of such activities, this paper makes the concept of organizational learning operational from the computational viewpoint for investigating socially situated intelligence. In particular, this paper focuses on the characteristics of multiagent learning as one kind of socially situated intelligence, and analyzes them using four operationalized learning mechanisms in organizational learning. A careful investigation on the characteristics of multiagent learning has revealed the following implications: (1) there are two levels in the learning mechanisms for multiagent learning (the individual level and organizational level) and each mechanism is divided into two types (single- and double-loop learning). The integration of these four learning mechanisms improves socially situated intelligence; and (2) the following properties support socially situated intelligence: (a) different dimensions in learning mechanisms, (b) interaction among various levels and types of learning mechanisms in addition to interaction among agents, and (c) combination of exploration at an individual level and exploitation at an organizational level.