22 research outputs found
Modeling 21st century project teams: docking workflow and knowledge network computational models
This paper reports on an attempt to integrate and extend two established computational
organizational models\u2014SimVision\uae and Blanche\u2014to examine the co-evolution of workflow
and knowledge networks in 21st century project teams. Traditionally, workflow in project teams
has been modeled as sets of sequential and/or parallel activities each assigned to a responsible
participant, organized in a fixed structure. In the spirit of Jay Galbraith\u2019s (1973) information
processing view of organizations, exceptions\u2014situations in which participants lack the required
knowledge to complete a task\u2014are referred up the hierarchy for resolution. However, recent
developments in digital technologies have created the possibility to design project teams that are
more flexible, self-organizing structures, in which exceptions can be resolved much more
flexibly through knowledge networks that extend beyond the project or even the company
boundaries. In addition to seeking resolution to exceptions up the hierarchy, members of project
teams may be motivated to retrieve the necessary expertise from other knowledgeable members
in the project team. Further, they may also retrieve information from non-human agents, such as
knowledge repositories or databases, available to the project team. Theories, such as Transactive
Memory, Public Goods, Social Exchange and Proximity may guide their choice of retrieving
information from a specific project team member or database. This paper reports on a \u201cdocked\u201d computational model that can be used to generate and test hypotheses about the co-evolution of
workflow and knowledge networks of these 21st century project teams in terms of their
knowledge distribution and performance. The two computational models being docked are
SimVision (Jin & Levitt, 1999) which has sophisticated processes to model organizations
executing project-oriented workflows, and Blanche (Hyatt, Contractor, & Jones, 1997), a multiagent computational network environment, which models multitheoretical mechanisms for the
retrieval and allocation of information in knowledge networks involving human and non-human
agents.
This paper was supported in part by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation for
the project \u201cCo-Evolution of Knowledge Networks and 21st Century Organizational Forms (IIS-
9980109)