Seeking principles of human organization

I shall describe the research activities pursued at the Strategic Organization Design unit. These activities are rooted in the field of organization science, which seeks to understand one of humanity’s most ancient and important inventions – the technology of “Organizing.” We study how organizations function, with empirical evidence serving as a basis for that understanding. In the lab, we study how people and organizations behave – and we simulate human organizations with computers to uncover principles of human organization. Our work, for example, helps identify organizational pathologies and the role of organization design in achieving superior financial performance. I shall discuss how organization design can improve – or corrupt – processes that occur when people jointly make decisions, search for breakthroughs, or try to win wars.