Modeling Team Processes: Issues and a Specific Example

This paper develops a perspective to modeling team processes by drawing on concepts from team theory, and the informational processing and organizational paradigms. In such a perspective, humans and their interactions in a team are modeled as objects in a computerized environment. The behavior of the objects are specified in terms of the executable programs. A simulation testbed is described. Various information structures for team decision making in an example financial domain are examined. Questions regarding the relationship between information structure who knows what, when, and how the information is used and team performance are studied for the example. Thus this study can be seen as a step in the translation of behavioral and normative viewpoints of team decision making into a computational framework. The results indicate that there are complex relationships between information structure and team performance. The conventional wisdom relating improved performance to more information is not always true. The experiments demonstrate several situations of team interaction where more information can lead to dysfunctional effects.

[1]  L. J. Pinson,et al.  An Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming and Smalltalk , 1988 .

[2]  C. Lindblom.  THE SCIENCE OF MUDDLING THROUGH , 1959 .

[3]  Edward J. Garrity,et al.  Intelligent control and resolution of a network of learning and problem solving processors , 1990, Twenty-Third Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[4]  H. Moulin.  The strategy of social choice , 1983 .

[5]  Joseph E. McGrath,et al.  The Social Psychology Of Time , 1964 .

[6]  Kenneth L. Kraemer,et al.  Computer-based systems for cooperative work and group decision making , 1988, CSUR.

[7]  Gerardo R. Ungson,et al.  Managerial Information Processing: A Research Review. , 1981 .

[8]  Helmy H. Baligh,et al.  The Process of Designing Organization Structures and their Information Substructures , 1984 .

[9]  Robert Balzer.  AI and Software Engineering: Will the Twain Ever Meet? , 1990, AAAI.

[10]  J. Holland,et al.  Artificial Adaptive Agents in Economic Theory , 1991 .

[11]  John H. Holland,et al.  Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems: An Introductory Analysis with Applications to Biology, Control, and Artificial Intelligence , 1992 .

[12]  J. March,et al.  A Behavioral Theory of the Firm , 1964 .

[13]  Arkalgud Ramaprasad,et al.  Cognitive process as a basis for MIS and DSS design , 1987 .

[14]  Sunil K. Sarin,et al.  Computer-Based Real-Time Conferencing Systems , 1985, Computer.

[15]  G. Huber.  The Nature and Design of Post-Industrial Organizations , 1984 .

[16]  Judea Pearl,et al.  Reverend Bayes on Inference Engines: A Distributed Hierarchical Approach , 1982, AAAI.

[17]  J. Katzenbach,et al.  The discipline of teams. , 1993, Harvard business review.

[18]  H. P Nii,et al.  Blackboard Systems , 1986 .

[19]  Sudha Ram,et al.  Modeling organizations as a social network of distributed knowledge-based systems , 1990, Twenty-Third Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[20]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  Prediction and Prescription in Systems Modeling , 1990, Oper. Res..

[21]  Oscar Nierstrasz,et al.  KNOs: KNowledge acquisition, dissemination, and manipulation Objects , 1987, TOIS.

[22]  Jay F. Nunamaker,et al.  Toward more intelligent organizations , 1990, Twenty-Third Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

[23]  Robert F. Bordley,et al.  An additive group utility for a fund manager , 1988 .

[24]  H. Raghav Rao,et al.  Technology transfer: making expert systems commercially successful , 1992, IEEE Expert.

[25]  Peter Cook,et al.  Project Nick: Meetings Augmentation and Analysis , 1987, ACM Trans. Inf. Syst..

[26]  Brad J. Cox,et al.  Object-oriented programming ; an evolutionary approach , 1986 .

[27]  John D. C. Little,et al.  Research Opportunities in the Decision and Management Sciences: Report of the Dallas National Science Foundation Workshop , 1986 .

[28]  Thomas W. Malone,et al.  Modeling the Performance of Organizational Structures , 1988, Oper. Res..

[29]  Carl Hewitt,et al.  Viewing Control Structures as Patterns of Passing Messages , 1977, Artif. Intell..

[30]  H. Simon,et al.  Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organization. , 1959 .

[31]  Robin M. Hogarth,et al.  Quality of Group Judgment , 1977 .

[32]  H. Penny Nii,et al.  Blackboard Systems, Part One: The Blackboard Model of Problem Solving and the Evolution of Blackboard Architectures , 1986, AI Mag..

[33]  Daniel G. Bobrow,et al.  Beyond the chalkboard: computer support for collaboration and problem solving in meetings , 1988, CACM.

[34]  H. Raghav Rao,et al.  An active intelligent decision support system - Architecture and simulation , 1994, Decis. Support Syst..

[35]  P. Thagard,et al.  Computational Philosophy of Science , 1988 .

[36]  Gul A. Agha,et al.  ACTORS - a model of concurrent computation in distributed systems , 1985, MIT Press series in artificial intelligence.

[37]  Robert W. Blanning,et al.  Expert Systems as an Organizational Paradigm , 1987, ICIS.

[38]  Gerardine DeSanctis,et al.  A foundation for the study of group decision support systems , 1987 .

[39]  Keith S. Decker,et al.  Distributed problem-solving techniques: A survey , 1987, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[40]  K. Arrow.  Social Choice and Individual Values , 1951 .

[41]  Peter G. W. Keen,et al.  Decision support systems : an organizational perspective , 1978 .

[42]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Behavioral Aspects of Information Processing for the Design of Management Information Systems , 1982, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics.

[43]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  The Sciences of the Artificial , 1970 .

[44]  Jay F. Nunamaker,et al.  Integration of organization and information systems modeling: an object-oriented approach , 1989, [1989] Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Volume III: Decision Support and Knowledge Based Systems Track.

[45]  Peter Wegner.  Capital-Intensive Software Technology , 1984, IEEE Software.

[46]  Charles W. Haley,et al.  Introduction to Financial Management , 1977 .

[47]  George P. Huber,et al.  exploiting information technologies to design more effective organizations , 1986 .

[48]  S. Winter,et al.  An evolutionary theory of economic change , 1983 .

[49]  Adele Goldberg,et al.  Smalltalk-80 - the interactive programming environment , 1984 .

[50]  E. F. Brigham,et al.  Financial Management: Theory and Practice , 1990 .

[51]  Klaus Krippendorff,et al.  Some Principles of Information Storage and Retrieval in Society , 1973 .

[52]  John C. Henderson.  FINDING SYNERGY BETWEEN DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS AND EXPERT SYSTEMS RESEARCH , 1987 .

[53]  James G. March,et al.  Adaptive Coordination of a Learning Team , 1987 .

[54]  Kenneth J. Arrow,et al.  Informational Structure of the Firm , 1985 .

[55]  Richard Bellman,et al.  Adaptive Control Processes: A Guided Tour , 1961, The Mathematical Gazette.

[56]  David P. Miller,et al.  AI: what simulationists really need to know , 1992, TOMC.

[57]  Fatemeh Zahedi,et al.  Group Consensus Function Estimation When Preferences are Uncertain , 1986, Oper. Res..

[58]  George P. Huber,et al.  The Decision-Making Paradigm of Organizational Design , 1986 .

[59]  Gerardine DeSanctis,et al.  Group decision support systems: a new frontier , 1984, DATB.

[60]  S. C. McIntyre,et al.  Embedding stakeholder analysis in object oriented organizational modeling , 1989, [1989] Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Volume III: Decision Support and Knowledge Based Systems Track.

[61]  Daniel P. Friedman,et al.  Coordinated computing: tools and techniques for distributed software , 1984 .

[62]  Tad Hogg,et al.  Collective behavior of predictive agents , 1990 .

[63]  R. Radner,et al.  Economic theory of teams , 1972 .

[64]  Neil M. Kay,et al.  The Innovating Firm , 1979 .

[65]  Thomas W. Malone,et al.  Modeling Coordination in Organizations and Markets , 1987 .

[66]  Daniel G. Bobrow,et al.  Object-Oriented Programming: Themes and Variations , 1989, AI Mag..

[67]  E. Johnsen.  Richard M. Cyert & James G. March, A Behavioral Theory of The Firm, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1963, 332 s. , 1964 .

[68]  Alexander Borgida,et al.  Features Of Languages for the Development of Information Systems at the conceptual Level , 1985, IEEE Software.