Designing Stress Resistant Organizations

Designing Stress Resistant Organizations demonstrates, in a persuasive way, how computational organization theory can be applied to advance the field of management with its successful integration of theory and practice. At the theoretical level, the book contains a comprehensive computational framework called DYCORP, which simulates dynamic and interactive organizational behaviors by incorporating multiple factors such as organizational design, task environment, and stress, and which generates consistent and insightful propositions on organizational performance. The book utilizes an organization science based approach to computational modeling. This approach recognizes the limit of human cognition as it was outlined by Herbert A. Simon in 1947. The model strives to focus on the essence of the reality that is most relevant to the research issue. This approach has been proven to be more beneficial for us to understand the underlying dynamics of the phenomenon. At the empirical level, this book describes an in-depth, though exploratory, analysis of sixty-nine organizational cases in the corporate world collected from multiple sources, which can provide contrast with and shed insight into the computational framework. The book combines both reporting on the research and how to do it that will appeal to a broad range of individuals. We would anticipate that academic researchers and graduate students will find the book useful and they, in turn, will then add to the growing area of computational organizational theory.