Book review: Computational Organization Theory. Edited by Kathleen M. Carley and Michael J. Prietula (Lawrence Earlbaum, Publishers, 1994)

Abstract

This book arose from a 1992 workshop sponsored by the College on Organizations of The Institute of Management Sciences (TIMS). The book reports on 13 different approaches to computer-based studies of organizational phenomena, largely organizational design issues, where the creative spark fired from artificial intelligence and/or expert systems methodologies. While the resulting models are more complex than mathematical models, they are sometimes as complex as the organizations they are meant to study. However, computer-based models of organizations are one of the most powerful tools we have in the arena of normative organizational theory. Richard M. Cyert, one of the founders of TIMS, and one of the early advocates of bringing computer modeling to the study of organizations, provides a forward to this volume that does look forward---to that happy day when suitably complex models will be confronted with actual behaviors from live organizations.