ORGANIZATIONAL DECISION CHEMISTRY ON A LATTICE

We use NetLogo 1 to design a simple multi-agent environment to explore organizational decision processes. Our work builds on the original insight of the "Garbage Can Model" of organizational choice (GCM) proposed by M. Cohen, J. March, and J. Olsen (1972). In this model organizations are viewed as crossroads of time-dependent flows of four distinct classes of objects: "problems," "solutions," "participants" and "opportunities." Collisions among the different objects generate events called "decisions." In our NetLogo-based reconstruction of the GCM, the type of decision is determined by the relative levels of energy accumulated by "participants" and "opportunities" up to the moment of collision. We make no attempt to reproduce all the features of the original model. Some features of our representation are not present in the original model and are included to cast new light on specific aspects of decision processes in organizations. The model is a highly preliminary attempt to represent organizational decision processes when agents live in a structured socio-physical space, and are capable of reproducing, i.e. of creating identical copies of themselves. In its current state of development the model serves mainly didactic purposes and as an illustration of the value of the NetLogo programming environment for representing complex organizational systems. The general learning point that the model can be used to illustrate is that dynamic complexity at the organizational level does not depend on complexity at level of individual agents. This conclusion suggests a conceptual link between aspects of social organizations and the study of emergence in natural and artificial systems.

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