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

Bernard D. Hill (), H. Roland Weistroffer () and Peter H. Aiken ()
Additional contact information
Bernard D. Hill: Commonwealth of Virginia
H. Roland Weistroffer: Virginia Commonwealth University
Peter H. Aiken: Virginia Commonwealth University

Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, 2005, vol. 11, issue 1, No 3, 59-85

Abstract: Abstract 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.

Keywords: emergent-network model; simulation; organizational design; comparison (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10588-005-1727-1 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:comaot:v:11:y:2005:i:1:d:10.1007_s10588-005-1727-1

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10588

DOI: 10.1007/s10588-005-1727-1

Access Statistics for this article

Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory is currently edited by Terrill Frantz and Kathleen Carley

More articles in Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().