Mapping of organizational models in Portuguese companies

Researchers have focused on the influence of organizational models in the actions, and subsequent outcomes of organizations and the results support the view that there is indeed an association between certain features of organizational models and organizational performance outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to map the organizational models used by Portuguese companies to identify possible dominant patterns and search for differences across several dimensions (sector, size, number of customers; internal/external market). The results show a level of organizational hybridism with several models applied simultaneously and with smaller firms showing a higher emphasis on dialogue, flexibility, and response capability. There is also a general preference among Portuguese companies for the bureaucratic organizational model. The results also indicate that organizations that adopt the bureaucratic model seem to be able to implement systematic processes innovation making compatible the rules and procedures with the ability to learn and adapt.The authors would like to thank BS15 Fifth International Conference on Business Sustainability 2015. Management, Technology and Learning for Individuals, Organisations and Society in Turbulent Environments, Editors, Professors Goran Ptunik and Paula Ávila, for their continuous and highly valuable support in this research field.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An Agent-Based Representation of the Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice

Cohen, March and Olsen\'s Garbage Can Model (GCM) of organizational choice represent perhaps the first – and remains by far the most influential –agent-based representation of organizational decision processes. According to the GCM organizations are conceptualized as crossroads of time-dependent flows of four distinct classes of objects: \'participants,\' \'opportunities,\' \'solutions\' and \'problems.\' Collisions among the different objects generate events called \'decisions.\' In this paper we use NetLogo to build an explicit agent-based representation of the original GCM. We conduct a series of simulation experiments to validate and extend some of the most interesting conclusions of the GCM. We show that our representation is able to reproduce a number of properties of the original model. Yet, unlike the original model, in our representation these properties are not encoded explicitly, but emerge from general principles of the Garbage Can decision processes.Organization Theory, Garbage Can Model, Agent-Based Modelling

Suboptimal solutions to network team optimization problems

Smoothness of the solutions to network team optimization problems with statistical information structure is investigated. Suboptimal solutions expressed as linear combinations of elements from sets of basis functions containing adjustable parameters are considered. Estimates of their accuracy are derived, for basis functions represented by sinusoids with variable frequencies and phases and Gaussians with variable centers and widthss

Implementing Internationalization in Ontario in a Public-Private Partnership

Abstract The goal of Canada’s International Education Strategy: Harnessing our Knowledge Advantage to Drive Innovation and Prosperity (Global Affairs Canada, 2014) is to target the best and brightest international students to study in the country’s higher education institutions, mutually benefiting the student and the country’s economy. However, internationalization has created a new reality, with students graduating ill-equipped for the global society and a demand for approaches that embrace the complexities of diversity and changing environments (Dailey-Hebert & Dennis, 2015). Absent from the internationalization agenda are the considerations of impact on students and what they need in an organization’s culture to be most successful in their “abroad” learning. Evaluation of how internationalization is implemented is a gap and missing from the internationalization discourse is how faculty and staff can be equipped in their roles as implementers of internationalization. Change is needed in higher education institutions, and it requires leadership and an awareness of the organization’s culture and context. The Problem of Practice (POP) in this Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) is the lack of an organizational culture focus in supporting international students in an Ontario higher education institution. Using the experience of a partnership between a public community college and a private for-profit college, this OIP will outline a proposal for a change plan for the public-private partnership to develop a culturally competent organizational culture. This OIP will also be framed by the distributed leadership approach, the organized anarchy perspective, and the competing values framework to understand the organization and facilitate the change. Keywords: Competing Values Framework, Distributed Leadership, Internationalization, Organized Anarchy, Organizational Culture, Public-private Partnershi

The Nature of Policy-Making in Universities

Policy-making in universities has been characterized in a variety of ways. The bureaucratic, collegial, political, and organized anarchy models have all been proposed as descriptions of the process. Although each of these models is useful in the study of university policy-making, they fail to provide a complete explanation of the phenomenon. An alternate approach to the conceptualization and analysis of policy-making is proposed and applied to a recent case at The University of Calgary. The proposed model describes policy-making as a set of "policymaking systems" each of which is temporary in nature and develops in response to an identifiable stress in the institutional environment.Dans les universités, la formulation de la politique se fait de différentes façons. Ont été proposés les modèles bureaucratique, collégial, politique et anarchie organisée. Quoique chacun ait apporté sa contribution à la recherche dans ce domaine, tous n 'arrivent pas à expliquer complètement le phénomène. Cet article propose une approche différente et l'applique à un cas bien particulier: l'Univer-sité de Calgary. Le modèle comprend un ensemble de "systèmes de formulation de la politique" dont chaque système est provisoire et répond à une force recon-naissable dans le milieu institutionnel

A Critical Review of Strategic Conflict Theory and Socio-political Instability Models

This paper provides a critical general overview of two strands of recent vast economic literature on social conflicts, namely strategic conflict theory and socio-political instability models. The first strand can be traced back to Haavelmo (1954) and has been further developed in a variety of ways by game theoretical models of rational conflict (Boulding, 1962; Schelling, 1963, Hirshleifer, 2001). Their goal is to understand threat power. A second version of conflict theory has been developed by the founders of the Public Choice School (Olson 1965, 1982; Tullock 1974, 1980; Stringham, 2005, 2007) in order to tackle genuine political violence. The main finding of this paper is that both strands of recent economic literature have not yet come to grips with social conflicts. The application of standard microeconomic assumptions to the field of "social conflicts" has resulted in reducing conflicts either to "rational conflicts"- a threat of conflict without any real clash - or "real self-interested private conflicts". In other words, economic theory has considered social protesters either as looters or lunatics, but never as a group of people struggling for a common cause.Strategic Conflict Theory, Socio-political instability models, Coase theorem, Appropriative activity, Social Conflicts

Digital service innovation enabled by the blockchain use in healthcare: the case of the allergic patients ledger

International audienceBy combining the institutional approach and the rational model of digital innovation, there is increasingly a great interest in the implementation of blockchain solutions in healthcare but, until then concrete evidence for this type of project is missing. At the same time the healthcare sector, allergology in particular seems to face security (confidentiality, availability and integrity) issues and information audit trail weaknesses. For these reasons, our study focuses on the co-construction of a distributed ledger for patients allergies with healthcare professionals. The aim is to design and implement a reliable tool to deal with the availability , integrity and confidentiality of information about new allergies and distinguish between validated allergies and declarative allergies for the purpose of mitigating negative effects of unavailability of reliable information about patients allergies. This article defers the first step of our methodological cycle by explaining how collaboration is organized between Pikcio (blockchain technology provider) and allergists. As a result, we have first versions of some deliverables such as formal specifications, risk matrix document and a UML design (class diagram, use case diagram and sequence diagram) as the research project is iterative

Sensitivity analysis of agent-based models: a new protocol

Agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly used in the management sciences. Though useful, ABMs are often critiqued: it is hard to discern why they produce the results they do and whether other assumptions would yield similar results. To help researchers address such critiques, we propose a systematic approach to conducting sensitivity analyses of ABMs. Our approach deals with a feature that can complicate sensitivity analyses: most ABMs include important non-parametric elements, while most sensitivity analysis methods are designed for parametric elements only. The approach moves from charting out the elements of an ABM through identifying the goal of the sensitivity analysis to specifying a method for the analysis. We focus on four common goals of sensitivity analysis: determining whether results are robust, which elements have the greatest impact on outcomes, how elements interact to shape outcomes, and which direction outcomes move when elements change. For the first three goals, we suggest a combination of randomized finite change indices calculation through a factorial design. For direction of change, we propose a modification of individual conditional expectation (ICE) plots to account for the stochastic nature of the ABM response. We illustrate our approach using the Garbage Can Model, a classic ABM that examines how organizations make decisions

Sensitivity analysis of agent-based models: a new protocol

Agent-based models (ABMs) are increasingly used in the management sciences. Though useful, ABMs are often critiqued: it is hard to discern why they produce the results they do and whether other assumptions would yield similar results. To help researchers address such critiques, we propose a systematic approach to conducting sensitivity analyses of ABMs. Our approach deals with a feature that can complicate sensitivity analyses: most ABMs include important non-parametric elements, while most sensitivity analysis methods are designed for parametric elements only. The approach moves from charting out the elements of an ABM through identifying the goal of the sensitivity analysis to specifying a method for the analysis. We focus on four common goals of sensitivity analysis: determining whether results are robust, which elements have the greatest impact on outcomes, how elements interact to shape outcomes, and which direction outcomes move when elements change. For the first three goals, we suggest a combination of randomized finite change indices calculation through a factorial design. For direction of change, we propose a modification of individual conditional expectation (ICE) plots to account for the stochastic nature of the ABM response. We illustrate our approach using the Garbage Can Model, a classic ABM that examines how organizations make decisions