This volume represents an advance in our understanding of how to represent and reason about organizational phenomena. Although organizational theorists have long grappled with the complexities of adaptive agents, ecological systems, and non-linear relations among the basic elements of organizational design, they have not, until recently, had the tools to grapple with these complex relationships. Recent advances in logic, symbolic programming, network analysis, and computer technology have made possible a series of tools that can be used to understand the complexities of organizational behavior. New computational techniques make it possible to develop and test more realistic models of organizational behavior. This volume offers examples of this new breed of models, and provides insight into how these advances and techniques can be used to extend our theoretical understanding of organizations.

Authored by leading researchers in the area of computational organization theory, the various chapters demonstrate the value of computational analysis for organizational theory and advance our understanding of the relationship between organizational design and performance. This book contains both theoretical and methodological contributions that enable organizational theorists to use computational and mathematical techniques to systematically address the complex relationships that underlie organizational life. It also presents new -- or sometimes, renewed -- approaches on how to conduct organizational research from multiple formal perspectives including: simulation, numerical analysis, symbolic logic, mathematical modeling, and graph theory.

"This is a useful contribution. The models are interesting and suggestive of promising further work."
—Canadian Artificial Intelligence

"Professors Carley and Prietula have done the field of organization theory a great service by putting this selection of chapters together....an excellent summary of the computational approach....In the new approaches represented in this book, the incentive for the simulations comes to a much greater extent from artificial intelligence and its derivative, expert systems....more than a series of chapters on organizational design. A wide range of topics in organizational theory is considered."
—Richard M. Cyert
Carnegie Mellon University, from the Foreword

Kathleen M. Carley, Michael J. Prietula