Maydays and Murphies: A Study of the Effect of Organizational Design, Task, and Stress on Organizational Performance

Abstract

Abstract : How should organizations of intelligent agents be designed so that they exhibit high performance even during periods of stress? We present a formal model of organizational performance given a distributed decision making environment in which agents encounter a radar detection task. using this model, we examine the performance of organizations with various organizational designs and task characteristics subject to various stresses. We distinguish two types of stress - external stress (such as hostile events that we call maydays) and internal stress (such as communication channel breakdown that we call murphies). This formal analysis suggests that: (1) regardless of stress, performance is enhanced if there is a match between the complexity of organizational design and task; (2) task characteristics and maydays (external stress) have more effect on performance than murphies (internal stress) and organizational design; (3) the effects of murphies (internal stress) can be ted by training, but only to a limited extent; (4) technology induced stress typically is more debilitating than personnel induced stress.... Stress, Organizational design, Organizational task, Stylized radar task, Task characteristics, Procedures, Inter-relationship.