Cognitive Science and Organizational Design: Assessing the Impact of Information Technology on Organizations

amount and kinds of communication between differen t agents . Galbraith (1974, 1977) expanded on their work , explicitly considering an organization's need to proces s information and reduce environmental uncertainty, an d strategies by which it could achieve this goal . Tushma n and Nadler (1978) hypothesized that different organizations face different organizations face different levels o f uncertainty and that an organization's effectivenes s would depend on the fit between its information processing capacity and its environment . The concepts discusse d in these studies are still very aggregate, however . Suc h simplifications are useful for general studies, but permi t only very limited conclusions . RESEARCH PROBLEM Since the invention of computers, researchers have investigated the relationship between informatio n technology (IT) and organizational structure and processes . Our research involves a new technique to investigate this link . The technique analyzes information processing in organizations using concepts of object oriented programming from artificial intelligence t o characterize the information processing in terms of th e kinds of messages people exchange and the ways they process those messages . The resulting models have mor e of the precision and flavor of cognitive science theories than most previous models based on the information processing view of organizations .