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CMU-ISRI-04-102
Institute for Software Research International
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
CMU-ISRI-04-102
A Network Optimization Approach for
Improving Organizational Design
Kathleen M. Carley, Natalia Y. Kamneva
January 2004
Institute for Software Research International (ISRI)
Center for Computational Analaysis of Social and Organizational Systems (CASOS)
CMU-ISRI-04-102.ps
CMU-ISRI-04-102.pdf
Keywords: Optimizer, optimization, Monte Carlo, simulated annealing,
multi-criteria optimization, global optimum, multivariate functions,
dynamic network analysis, social network analysis
Organizations are frequently designed and redesigned, often in
efforts to improve performance or meet various managerial goals
for coordination and communication. Such design is often done
through the review of a few of options and the use of managerial
and possibly personnel insight into how the new design might work.
In contrast, we provide a systematic optimization based approach.
In this approach, the user can pick one or more Dynamic Network
Analysis (DNA) metrics and then use one or more of the available
optimizers to find a design that more closely meets this ideal.
The optimizer utilizes heuristic based optimization procedures
to generate an optimized organizational design given a particular
mission. DNA metrics, such as Communication Congruence, Resource
Congruence, Cognitive Load, and Actual Workload, serve to define
criteria. The Optimizer can perform multi-criteria optimization in
order to improve several metrics simultaneously. Two optimization
methods can be used Monte Carlo and Simulated Annealing, both of
which are statistical methods of finding a global optimum. DNA
metrics used in the optimizations are computed by ORA. This
report describes this optimizer.
24 pages
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