Can agent-based modelling support organizational design in a complex environment? The proposal of a computational laboratory

Organisations are increasingly considered Complex Adaptive Systems, made by multiple parts interacting with each other and the external environment. Such interactions typically produce complex and nonlinear emergent properties that are difficult to understand, predict, and manage. This perspective has outlined the need to adopt different theoretical and methodological approaches in organisational design, able to consider the presence of interdependencies among the diverse organisational aspects and the co-evolution processes between the organisation and the external environment. Therefore, this paper aims to present an agent-based computational laboratory named CLOD (Computational Laboratory of Organizational Design) to explore the advantages that agent-based approaches could offer scholars and practitioners in organisation research, particularly in organisational design. The laboratory’s conceptual architecture is based on March’s organisational learning model, appropriately reframed in the light of Complex Adaptive Systems. At this research stage, the CLOD lab is mainly theory-oriented and offers the possibility to better understand and interpret organisations’ collective behaviours and learning processes in complex environments.