We elucidate the interplay between the free rider dilemmas faced by both management and employees of a firm. Both managers and employees face a free rider dilemma: organizations can hire workers trained by competitor organizations and workers that shirk can still receive a share of the profits from production. If all organizations and employees reason similarly, the overall level of production will be very low. We construct a dynamical model of the two-level social dilemma and find, by running computer experiments, that the dynamical behavior at the two levels is closely coupled and highly path-dependent. In some cases the double dilemma is resolved for the industry as a whole and productivity increases steadily over time. In others, the organizational level dilemma remains unresolved and workers contribute at fluctuating levels. In these cases the overall productivity stays low. Our computer experiments indicate that low turnover, large enterprise size and high productivity are positively correlated, a finding that is in line with the empirical literature on turnover and training in organizations. 1

Organizations sometimes face critical situations or crises that can induce severe consequences or even disasters if wrong decisions are made. The bulk of crisis management research has relied heavily on case study methods yet often with rhetorical or even inconsistent suggestions. With an exclusive focus on crisis prevention, the issue of how organizations can maintain good performance when faced with critical situations has largely remained unexplored. There is also an apparent lack of consideration regarding how aspects of organizational design and task environment interact and affect organizational performance under critical situations. In this paper, we attempt to address this issue from an open system’s perspective and integrate techniques of computational modeling with the analyses of two crisis cases, the Vincennes incident and the Hinsdale incident. The use of a computational model with strong organization theory foundation has provided a systematic mechanism for abstracting empirical information and generating theoretical results, thus complementing conventional case analyses, which thrive on in-depth information but are often limited by the lack of analytical ability to provide theoretical insight that goes beyond empirical descriptions. For the two crisis cases, the study shows, through detailed quantitative illustrations, that the computer model can be very effective in predicting organizational performance and suggesting designs that organizations can employ to mitigate the impact of crises. This study has demonstrated that our approach of computational case analysis can be very successful in providing systematic and explicit guidance for effective crisis mitigation both theoretically and empirically.

simulation, model validation, organization theory, network organization, organizational Network organizations offer learning, adaptive and resilient capabilities that are particularly useful in high velocity environments as these capabilities allow the organization to effectively respond to change. The dynamic, evolutionary nature of network organizations affords such advantageous capabilities. Although the advantages of network organizations are well-studied, the risks associated with them are not. Of interest is the study of critical personnel. Understanding criticality within an organization can help improve performance and protect against the risk of loss. But the study of critical personnel has traditionally used static structural representations that do not represent the dynamic nature of network organizations. This thesis advances the study of critical personnel risks in network organizations

This study helps to fill a significant gap in the literature on organizations and inequality by investigating the central role of meritbased reward systems in shaping gender and racial disparities in wages and promotions. The author develops and tests a set of propositions isolating processes of performance-reward bias, whereby women and minorities receive less compensation than white men with equal scores on performance evaluations. Using personnel data from a large service organization, the author empirically establishes the existence of this bias and shows that gender, race, and nationality differences continue to affect salary growth after performance ratings are taken into account, ceteris paribus. This finding demonstrates a critical challenge faced by the many contemporary employers who adopt merit-based practices and policies. Although these policies are often adopted in the hope of motivating employees and ensuring meritocracy, policies with limited transparency and accountability can actually increase ascriptive bias and reduce equity in the workplace. An extensive body of research on organizations and stratification has established that organizations play a key role in generating and perpetuating inequality in employment outcomes (Baron and Bielby 1980; Baron

Most empirical tests of the many competing theories of wage rigidity use publicly available data on pay rates and employment that reveal little about the institutions and motivations that explain wage behavior. In order to learn more, some economists have analyzed unusual sources of data or have conducted surveys and experiments. Management scientists and organizational psychologists have for

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Previous research has predominately focused on individual-level variables as determinants of voluntary turnover. Less is known about organizational-level determinants, which are likely to be subject to more systematic control by organizations than individual factors. This longitudinal study is the first to explore organizational-level determinants of turnover in small firms. Data were obtained from 132 small business owners from the Greater Vancouver area of British Columbia, Canada and hypotheses were grounded in our analysis of the competitive dynamics of small firms. Our results show that firms that have more extensive formalization have higher voluntary turnover. This finding was contrary to those who argue that formalization has positive organizational and individual effects because it decreases role ambiguity. We also found that an owner's perception of the firm as successful had a greater impact on lowering voluntary turnover than the firm's actual level of financial performance...

Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems. To my wife, Libby, and to my family, whom I love beyond words… Computational methods combined with traditional empirical techniques offer a powerful new approach to the study of human performance. Scholars engaged in the study of work group and organizational behavior are increasingly calling for the use of integrated methods in conducting research, including the wider adoption of computational models for generating and testing new theory. In this collection of three studies, I first review the state of modern computational modeling and find a steady increase in the incorporation of dynamic, adaptive, and realistic behaviors of agents in social network settings. However, my analysis suggests areas that can be addressed in the next generation of organizational simulation systems. I compare 28 models according to more than 200 evaluation criteria, ranging from simple representations of agent demographic and performance characteristics, to more richly defined instantiations of behavioral attributes, interaction with non-agent entities, model

Organizations are occasionally faced with technologically based and accident triggered crises that can be extremely costly. An example is Bhopal, a major chemical spill. In the aftermath of such a disaster, organizations, both the one that suffered and others in the same or similar industries, often reexamine how they are structured. The questions arise: how should organizations be designed if they are to perform well in such crises, and would organizations benefit from structural changes during crises? We address these questions using a combination of computational analysis and archival data on 69 real organizations faced with crises. For each crisis incident, we contrast the organization’s predicted and actual performance in a crisis situation. We find a high level of validation for the computational model. Using the validated computational model we then go on to address the hypothetical question: what is likely to have happened if the real organization had responded differently to the crisis. The findings show that there is no guarantee that a well performing organization in a general situation will continue to do so during a crisis situation. In addition, how to design or restructure an organization to mitigate the impact of crises will depend on the various design factors the organization employs. This work further demonstrates that often, the lessons learned by organizations when responding to crisis situations may be exactly the wrong lessons.