The virtual design team: An information-processing model of design team management

Research to date on organizational theory in general--and coordination theory in particular--has been hampered by the difficulty of conducting controlled experiments in real organizations to test and refine theories. The Virtual Design Team (VDT) research is an information processing model of managerial decision-making based principally on organizational concepts derived from (Thompson 1967), (Galbraith 1977) and (Mintzberg 1979), (Simon 1981) and (March 1988a). Verification tests the implication of parts of Galbraith's theory on the coordination performance of an engineering design team.;A behavioral interpretation of organizational information processing and decision-making is used within a process perspective. This perspective regards how information processing is carried out as more important than what information is used. Managers and design subteams (actors) are modeled performing organizational roles--considered an insightful and meaningful perspective from which to understand organizational processes and their outcomes (March 1988a). Extensive observations of managerial behavior by other researchers is complemented with my own field observations.;The VDT model is an object-oriented, stochastic, discrete event simulation of a multidisciplinary design team using model-based reasoning derived from Artificial Intelligence. Extensive verification and testing of the model was carried out with an oil refinery design project.;The design task is modeled as a network of activities performed by actors. Actors pay attention to information according to attention rules; process information in a length of time determined by processing knowledge; and direct information to others. Actors inherit behavioral characteristics from professional, corporate, and team hierarchies. They receive and direct information through task, hierarchical control, and social relationships. Actors' communication tools affect the richness, volume, and timing of information passing among them. Within this framework, we can model how alternative organizational relationships and communication tools affect the duration of design tasks.;Typical questions include "How will centralizing decision-making affect project team performance?" or "How will a new communication tool such as electronic mail affect performance?".;Simulation models based on VDT ideas are expected to provide computerized tools for researchers to develop, validate and refine theories that describe how collaborative knowledge-intensive tasks such as the concurrent design of facilities are, or should be, coordinated.