A complexity perspective on collaborative decision making in organizations: The ecology of group-performance

Abstract

Networks of communication are essential when managing corporate work and performing information exchange; the systems must allow them to be dynamic and well-structured. They help provide high organizational performance and innovative capacity in today's knowledge intense corporations, and this means that organizations must manage the networks strategically. Despite the fact that practitioners are aware of the huge influence of informal communication on decision making, little is known about the underlying principles of efficient employee network collaboration, which is dynamic in nature, especially for complex environments resulting from steady innovation and high competitive pressure. We addressed this issue from a complexity perspective, using an agent based simulation to visualize the key elements of efficient, information-based, collaborative decision making. Our findings suggested that information and communication technologies (ICT) may not be able to leverage corporate performance of the increasingly complex adaptive organizations. There seem to be elementary natural constraints on the cognitive capacities of people dealing with and managing information. Rather than a better technical approach, a more ecologic one is therefore advocated as the best way to improve decision making.