Information Flow Structure in Large-Scale Product Development Organizational Networks

Dan Braha and Yaneer Bar-Yam
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Dan Braha: Ben-Gurion University
Yaneer Bar-Yam: New England Complex Systems Institute & Harvard University

Industrial Organization from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In recent years, understanding the structure and function of complex networks has become the foundation for explaining many different real- world complex social, information, biological and technological phenomena. Techniques from statistical physics have been successfully applied to the analysis of these networks, and have uncovered surprising statistical structural properties that have also been shown to have a major effect on their functionality, dynamics, robustness, and fragility. This paper examines, for the first time, the statistical properties of strategically important complex organizational information-based networks -- networks of people engaged in distributed product development -- and discusses the significance of these properties in providing insight into ways of improving the strategic and operational decision-making of the organization. We show that the patterns of information flows that are at the heart of large-scale product development networks have properties that are like those displayed by information, biological and technological networks. We believe that our new analysis methodology and empirical results are also relevant to other organizational information-based human or nonhuman networks.

Keywords: Large-scale product development; socio-technical systems; information systems; social networks; Innovation; complex engineering systems; distributed problem solving (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C1 C5 C8 C9 D1 D4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2004-07-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-net
Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 21
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwpio:0407012

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