Including Organizational Cultural Parameters in Work Processes1

Recent work in modeling decision-making work processes has focused on including the national culture of individual decision-makers in order to emphasize the differences in decision criteria between decision-makers of different nationalities. In addition to nationality, a decision-maker is also a member of an organization and brings this organizational culture to his role in the work process, where it may also affect his task performance. In order to represent the organizational impact on the work process, five organizational cultural parameters were identified and included in an algorithm for modeling and simulation of cultural difference in human decision-making. While the five modifiers are not orthogonal, each captures a unique aspect of the organizational impact. The organizational cultural parameters are Authority Distance, Interface Culture, Command Authority, Doctrine, and Hierarchical Arrangement. This allows the prediction of outcome changes for a work process when interacting decision-makers have similar national cultures but whose organizational culture is different. The effect of including these parameters was illustrated on a Public Affairs Office process that integrated U.S. and U.K. decision-makers