Multiscale Decision-Making: Bridging Organizational Scales

Decision-making in organizations is complex due to interdependencies among decision-makers (agents) within and across organizational hierarchies. We propose a multiscale decision-making model that captures and analyzes multiscale agent interactions in large, distributed decision-making systems. In general, multiscale systems exhibit phenomena that are coupled through various temporal, spatial and organizational scales. Our model focuses on the organizational scale and provides analytic, closed-form solutions which enable agents across all organizational scales to select a best course of action. By setting an optimal intensity level for agent interactions, an organizational designer can align the choices of selfinterested agents with the overall goals of the organization. Moreover, our results demonstrate when local and aggregate information exchange is sufficient for system-wide optimal decision-making. We motivate the model and illustrate its capabilities using a manufacturing enterprise example.