A Computational Framework for Experimentation with Edge Organizations


Placeholder Show Content

Abstract/Contents

Abstract
Edge organizations emphasize moving knowledge and decision-making power to individuals and teams who directly interface with the environment. Traditional project modeling tools cannot adequately represent the critical impact of information and knowledge flows, nor the importance of developing trust between workers in Edge organizations. The Virtual Design Team (VDT) computational modeling platform evolved from ongoing research at Stanford University starting in the late 1980s. VDT has been used successfully to model activities, communications, and exception handling within traditional project organizations performing relatively routine, albeit highly concurrent, tasks. This paper discusses POW-ER, a new computational modeling platform based on the same “information processing” view of organizations as VDT. POW-ER is an extensible organization simulation platform, within which we have prototyped direct support for modeling several critical dynamic behaviors of workers in modern knowledge-based organizations: knowledge flows, trust effects, and cultural/institutional differences between team members from different backgrounds. POW-ER can also support demand-driven, dynamic allocation of resources to tasks as needed, to model work processes that cannot be represented by predefined tasks. Using POW-ER, researchers can now conduct emulation experiments on Edge organizations to validate and calibrate the computational model, ultimately aiding in the systematic design and optimization of these organizational

Description

Type of resource text
Date created June 13, 2005 - June 15, 2005

Creators/Contributors

Author Ramsey, Marc
Author Levitt, Raymond

Subjects

Subject Center for Integrated Facility Engineering
Subject Global Projects Center
Subject Civil and Environmental Engineering
Subject Virtual Design Team
Subject Organization Design
Subject Simulation
Genre Conference publication

Bibliographic information

Access conditions

Use and reproduction
User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.

Preferred citation

Preferred Citation
Ramsey, M.S. and Levitt, R.E. (2005). “A Computational Framework for Experimentation with Edge Organizations,” presented in the proceedings of the 10th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium, McLean, VA, June 13-15 2005.

Collection

CIFE Publications

Contact information

Loading usage metrics...