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Constructing Agent-Based Models of Organizational Routines

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Agent-Based Simulation of Organizational Behavior

Abstract

Organizational routines represent a form of organizational behavior currently studied in multifarious scientific domains, such as economics, organization science, sociology, and psychology. The diverse perspectives on this phenomenon produce a plethora of models reflecting, for instance, what a routine is and how it emerges from and changes within a socio-technical system. Newcomers to the topic of organizational routines may be easily confused by this substantial scientific diversity, discovering many maps for seemingly the same territory. This chapter presents descriptors to facilitate the comparison of work on organizational routines, and applies them to a contemporary method employed to investigate the phenomenon: agent-based modeling. This insight is related to technical issues relevant to simulating organizational routines, such as model design, implementation, and validation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors greatly appreciate the feedback provided by two anonymous reviewers, Jonas Hauke and Bruce Edmonds on an early draft of this chapter. Your remarks have considerably helped us to communicate our ideas.

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  1. Institute of Technology, Work Processes and Vocational Education, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany

    Cara H. Kahl

  2. Institute of Management Control and Accounting, Hamburg University of Technology, Hamburg, Germany

    Matthias Meyer

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Correspondence to Cara H. Kahl .

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  1. Department of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Slagelse, Denmark

    Davide Secchi

  2. Koblenz University, Koblenz, Germany

    Martin Neumann

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Kahl, C.H., Meyer, M. (2016). Constructing Agent-Based Models of Organizational Routines. In: Secchi, D., Neumann, M. (eds) Agent-Based Simulation of Organizational Behavior. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18153-0_5

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