Modeling Reciprocity in Political Organizations with
the
Interaction Value Analysis Framework
Efficient information exchange is essential to the success
of an organization. Interaction Value Analysis (IVA) models an organization
as a set of rational agents with mutually orthogonal knowledge profiles.
An agent generates value for the organization by exchanging information through
issuing an interaction request to another agent, and possibly receiving a
response if the request is proper and the respondent is not too busy. Combining
results from queuing theory, game theory and optimization, IVA has succeeded
in reproducing from basic principles several policies for organization design
previously described in organizational contingency theory. In particular,
if an organization is able to supply to its members costless access to each
other member, a common culture of responding evenhandedly to requests from
others, and full information about the skills, abilities and assignments
of every other member,
then is there any need for someone with a global perspective to coordinate
information flow in this organization? IVA answered this question with
an “It depends”, describing factors that made such a central communication
control mechanism necessary and factors that made it not worth its cost.
These factors are expressed in terms of dimensions we call Diversity, Interdependence,
Differentiation, Load, and Urgency.
This paper addresses the changes that result when the
second assumption above no longer holds. Political organizations are
characterized by preferential treatment by some members, for other members,
based in part on ability to reciprocate or return a favor. IVA represents
this distinction between a political organization and a cooperative organization
by changing the queuing discipline for processing interaction requests from
a first-come-first-served discipline to a priority queuing discipline.
The mathematical solution to the queuing problem posed was recently derived
by out team. I will present the results of incorporating this finding
into the original IVA model.
Walid Nasrallah
American University of Beirut
Faculty of Engineering and Architecture
wn05@aub.ed.lb