| The objective of this study is to set up an analytical framework that supports the design of coalition organizations based on cultural constraints. Besides serving as a design aid, the analytical framework enables a designer to test hypotheses related to the effects of heterogeneity on organizational outcome. Throughout this study, the heterogeneous coalition organization design problem has been formulated as a Multi-level Distributed Intelligence System in which decision making nodes are culturally uniform sub-groups. A bottom-up design methodology that starts from the specification of interaction patterns shaped by cultural characteristics of sub-groups has been developed that exploits results from Lattice Theory, uses the five stage decision maker model, and applies the concept of group-organization fit. A case study is used (1) to illustrate the use of the methodology to design and evaluate coalition alternatives, and (2) to analyze the effects of different types and degrees of heterogeneity on the performance of coalition organizations as part of the test bed. The approach enables the inclusion of group-level discriminating attributes such as national culture into the design of organizational architectures and introduces the possibility of using this type of information to design more fit coalition organizations. The research focus of the dissertation is the formalization of the proposed methodology and implementation of the associated algorithms. |
