Discrete decision model and multi-agent simulation of the Liang Zong two-chain hierarchical organization in a complex project

摘要

Different from the organization structure of complex projects in Western countries, the Liang Zong hierarchical organization structure of complex projects in China has two different chains, the chief-engineer chain and the general-director chain,to handle the trade-off between technical and management decisions. However, previous works on organization search have mainly focused on the single-chain hierarchical organization in which all decisions are regarded as homogeneous. The heterogeneity and the interdependency between technical decisions and management decisions have been neglected. A two-chain hierarchical organization structure mapped from a real complex project is constructed. Then, a discrete decision model for a Liang Zong two-chain hierarchical organization in an NK model framework is proposed. This model proves that this kind of organization structure can reduce the search space by a large amount and that the search process should reach a final stable state more quickly. For a more complicated decision mechanism, a multi-agent simulation based on the above NK model is used to explore the effect of the two-chain organization structure on the speed, stability, and performance of the search process. The results provide three insights into how, compared with the single-chain hierarchical organization, the two-chain organization can improve the search process: it can reduce the number of iterations efficiently; the search is more stable because the search space is a smoother hill-like fitness landscape; in general, the search performance can be improved.However, when the organization structure is very complicated, the performance of a two-chain organization is inferior to that of a single-chain organization. These findings about the efficiency of the unique Chinese-style organization structure can be used to guide organization design for complex projects.