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KDI - Co-evolution of Knowledge Networks
and 21st Century Organizational Forms: Computational Modeling and Empirical Testing.
Abstract:
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 M. 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."
According to Carley, new information
technologies such as "intranets" "connect people with common interests,
skills, and resources creating a knowledge network and providing the organization with a
visible organizational memory. As a result, new forms of organizing are made possible, and
at the same time the complexity of the organization is increasing. We need new ways of
understanding and reasoning about social and knowledge networks. Computational modeling
and analysis is such a method."
The research team is itself a knowledge
network with expertise in communication, computer science, engineering, psychology,
sociology, organization science, social networks, statistics and urban planning. The
interdisciplinary, inter-university team includes Kathleen M. Carley from Carnegie Mellon
University, Noshir Contractor, Stanley Wasserman, and Andrea Hollingshead from the U. of
I., Ray Levitt, John Kunz, and Francoise Bar from Stanford University and Peter Monge and
Janet Fulk from the University of Southern California.
The project team will study how
knowledge networks evolve in theory and in practice. With a novel blending of
computational modeling and field studies the team will look at the impact of changes in IT
and incentive systems on organizational performance and learning. The computational effort
will be based on multiple models. According to Kathleen M. Carley, a Carnegie Mellon
professor of sociology and organizations and director of CASOS, this study will be
"the first large scale application in which multiple computational models of
organizations are simultaneously used to generate hypotheses and explore theoretical
implications for organizations." Field data will be drawn from at least a dozen
organizations. In order to accommodate the increasingly global nature of network
organizations the project will include multinational organizations and several
organizations based outside the United States. The team expects to produce, according to
Noshir Contractor, a University of Illinois professor of speech communication and
psychology and one of the principal investigators, "the first comprehensive,
interdisciplinary test to explain and predict the evolution of knowledge networks and
network organizations."
The NSF Knowledge and Distributed
Intelligence Initiative for the 21st Century was established in 1997. The NSF established
its initiative to create networked systems that increase the availability of information;
develop a better understanding of the nature of intelligence; design new ways of advancing
knowledge; and provide a fund for multidisciplinary research about knowledge investments. |
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