AGENT-BASED SIMULATION OF ORGANIZATIONAL DYNAMICS IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECT TEAMS

  • JeongWook Son (Built Environment, University of Washington) ;
  • Eddy M. Rojas (The Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction, University of Nebraska-Lincoln)
  • Published : 2011.02.16

Abstract

As construction projects have been getting larger and more complex, a single individual or organization cannot have complete knowledge or the abilities to handle all matters. Collaborative practices among heterogeneous individuals, which are temporarily congregated to carry out a project, are required in order to accomplish project objectives. These organizational knowledge creation processes of project teams should be understood from the active and dynamic viewpoint of how they create information and knowledge rather than from the passive and static input-process-output sequence. To this end, agent-based modeling and simulation which is built from the ground-up perspective can provide the most appropriate way to systematically investigate them. In this paper, agent-based modeling and simulation as a research method and a medium for representing theory is introduced. To illustrate, an agent-based simulation of the evolution of collaboration in large-scale project teams from a game theory and social network perspective is presented.

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