A simulator for operational organizational design [Toshizume Ohta, ISSS 1998 Paper Session, July 23/98]

These notes are a rough transcription, prepared as each individual presenter and/or commentator spoke at the ISSS 1998 conference. Gaps and errors have likely occurred. For more accurate citations, please consult the original presenters. These notes have been contributed to the ISSS by David Ing, of the IBM Advanced Business Institute (sabi@systemicbusiness.org).

Toshizume Ohta, Graduate School of Information Systems, U. of Electrocommunications, Tokyo, with Kazunari Ishida

Purpose of the O-Cubed simulator: find the best organizational design.

• Model org and estimate alternative org designs.

Concept:

• Agents
• Tasks:
• Coordination structures:
• Horizontal and vertical division of labour as primary design factors.
• Can have shared resource use.
• Self-management or hierarchical management.
• Want to provide alternative choices for org design.

• Unable to design based on contract net oriented modeling or team oriented modeling due to lack of choices in alternative org designs.
• Contract net oriented (AGENT0 for OT-DAI Abbas & O'Hare, 1997)
• Quasi-vertical division of labour only
• Fixed function of agents such as manager or contractor.
• No choice except for hierarchical contracts.
• Team oriented modeling (Pleural-SOAR, Carley & Prietura, 1994), (Team-SOAR, Kang, Waisel & Wallance, 1998)
• Horizontal division of labour only.
• Independent problem-solving capability
• No choice except for self decision making

• Flexible functions of agents such as coordinator agent and/or processor agent.

• Easy description of decision making processes for agents.
• Flexible descriptions for tasks and coordination structures

• Alternative Creation, Selection and Execution
• Visualized Programming Interface.

1. Clarify alternative designs, environmental parameters, and estimation indicators.
2. Model the organization
3. Test the alternative designs by running the model
4. Observe results of simulation.

• Amount of tasks would be defined as the number of customer orders to a waiter.

• Data structures:
• Shop availability as <shop>, <agent> (i.e. horizontal division of labour)
• Management relation as <manager>, <cook> (i.e. vertical division of labour)
• Alternative organization designs:
• Centralized: manage individuals
• Decentralized: team manages self
• Integrated: 1 manager controls 2 cooks
• Defining and describing tasks:
• Menus and cooking processes as ...
• order as <order>, <item>
• item as <item>, <job>, <shop>
• job
• Describing a program for agents, using rule templates.
• If-then-else

• Try some alternative composite organization models.

Question