KDI:

Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Initiative

Today, information technology is radically altering organizations and we can use that same technology to inter-university project to study the evolution of new organizational forms in the 21st century. That is the opinion of Kathleen Carley, one of the Principle investigators on a new $1.5 million research grant from a National Science Foundation as part of the Knowledge and Distributed Intelligence Initiative that will support a three-year inter-disciplinary inter-university project on new forms of organizing. Researchers will explore how new information technologies are shaping communication networks and how these networks are changing the way 21st century organizations will perform. As noted by Carley, "One of the most exciting things about this project is that it is bringing together computational models of organizations with actual data on real organizations with experimental data on team performance to create a better understanding of how the structure of the organization influences and is influenced by information technology."

Major results:
1) Many canonical findings regarding transactive memory emerge from
basic cognitive principles of relative similarity, relative expertise,
and reduction in cognitive demand.

2) Many canonical findings regarding public goods emerge from basic
cognitive principles of relative similarity, relative expertise, and
reduction in cognitive demand.

3) Identification of multiple types of docking. Criteria for succes of
docking experiments.

4) Demonstration of Constructs ability to produce and express
group-level differences in technology based performance.