Modelling And Simulation Of Organizational Structure Based On Total Relationship Flow Management Theorems

Organizational structure is a key determinant of the performance of an existingorganization. Relevant research has been striving for seeking the optimal organizationalstructure that can adapt to the changing environment and enable the organization to functionwell. Organizational structure can be abstracted as a set of relationship flows between entitiesbased on the Total Relationship Flow Management Theorems (TRFMTs).This work studies the intrinsic relationship between organizational structure andorganizational behavior from the perspective of the TRFMTs and focuses on presenting therelationship flows within an organization in a concrete way. Through organization modellingand simulation, different organizational structure and TRF can contribute to differentorganizational performance. Organization under RTM has a better performance, but thelinkage between different positions may increase the total cost for the organization and delaythe project completion. Organization under NRTM has the same performance as the one underRTM if both penalty cost and link cost are low. This study reveals the significant effects of theTRF on the performance of an organization. More importantly, it provides researchers a novelapproach to organization analysis by adopting the philosophy of TRFMTs and givesorganization designers insights into the pursuit of the optimal organizational structure. Thecontent and the contribution of this thesis are listed as below.(1) Analysis on organizational structure from the perspective of the TRFMTs. It is the set ofrelationship flow that combines the organizational internal network.(2) Modelling on organizational structure is proposed based on TRFMTs. A TRFM-basedtemplate is designed to facilitate analysis on organization structures and an agent-basedorganization model is put forward as the pre-work of simulation.(3) Based on the developed TRFMTs, this study proposes an agent-based model representingan organizational structure under project-based environments, following simulation in virtualexperiments for the performance comparison under NRTM and RTM organizational structures.