IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v39y1993i2p218-240.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Organizational Simulation and Information Systems Design: An Operations Level Example

Author

Listed:
  • Arundhati Kumar

    (Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213)

  • Peng Si Ow

    (IBM, Entry Systems Division, MC 1335, Austin, Texas 78758)

  • Michael J. Prietula

    (Graduate School of Industrial Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213)

Abstract

The interplay between organizational structure, the decisions made by agents within the structure, and the technology supporting those agents is an important and complex, but not well understood, phenomenon in modern organizational studies. In this paper we describe how simulating key aspects of an organization's structure, in this case a hospital, can yield insights into the design of information systems and their performance. In particular, we report on a project that simulates alternative distributed decision-making approaches for patient scheduling tasks. The results indicate that there are important and complicated interactions between the alternative organizational structures simulated, the form of the information systems supporting those structures, and the task environment. This suggests that current, universal, a priori assumptions about the interplay between technology and organizational structure are questionable. Furthermore, organization-specific simulation is seen as a potentially useful method of explicating the important tradeoffs in alternative design possibilities.

Suggested Citation

  • Arundhati Kumar & Peng Si Ow & Michael J. Prietula, 1993. "Organizational Simulation and Information Systems Design: An Operations Level Example," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(2), pages 218-240, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:39:y:1993:i:2:p:218-240
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.39.2.218
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.39.2.218
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.39.2.218?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lucertini, M. & Nicolo, F. & Telmon, D., 1995. "Integration of benchmarking and benchmarking of integration," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 59-71, March.
    2. Jisung Kim & Richard M. Burton, 2002. "The Effect of Task Uncertainty and Decentralization on Project Team Performance," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 8(4), pages 365-384, December.
    3. P. Gemmel & D. Vandaele & W. Tambeur, 2007. "Hospital Process Orientation (HPO): The development of a measurement tool," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 07/480, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    4. José Barbero & José Casillas & Mike Wright & Alicia Ramos Garcia, 2014. "Do different types of incubators produce different types of innovations?," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 151-168, April.
    5. Albino, Vito & Pontrandolfo, Pierpaolo & Scozzi, Barbara, 2002. "Analysis of information flows to enhance the coordination of production processes," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1-2), pages 7-19, January.
    6. Piet Verheyen, 1998. "The Missing Link in Budget Models of Nonprofit Institutions: Two Practical Dutch Applications," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 44(6), pages 787-800, June.
    7. Ponsiglione, C. & Cannavacciuolo, L. & Primario, S. & Quinto, I. & Zollo, G., 2021. "The ambiguity of natural language as resource for organizational design: A computational analysis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 654-665.
    8. Rajiv D. Banker & Robert J. Kauffman, 2004. "50th Anniversary Article: The Evolution of Research on Information Systems: A Fiftieth-Year Survey of the Literature in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 281-298, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:39:y:1993:i:2:p:218-240. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.