On the making of crystal balls: Five lessons about simulation modeling and the organization of work

IF 5.7 2区 管理学 Q1 INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE Information and Organization Pub Date : 2021-03-01 DOI:10.1016/j.infoandorg.2021.100339
Paul M. Leonardi , DaJung Woo , William C. Barley
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引用次数: 7

Abstract

Digital models that simulate the dynamics of a system are increasingly used to make predictions about the future. Although modeling has been central to decision-making under conditions of uncertainty across many industries for many years, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the role that models play in prediction and policymaking real for millions of people around the world. Despite the fact that modeling is a process through which experts use data and statistics to make sophisticated guesses, most consumers expect a model's predictions to be like crystal balls and provide perfect information about what the future will bring. Over the last decade, we have conducted a series of in-depth, longitudinal studies of digital modeling across several industries. From these studies, we share five lessons we have learned about modeling that demonstrate (1) why models are indeed not crystal balls and (2) why, despite their indeterminacy, people tend to treat them as crystal balls anyway. We discuss what each of these lessons can teach us about how to respond to the predictions made by COVID-19 models as well models of other stochastic processes and events about whose futures we wish to know today.

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关于水晶球的制作:关于模拟建模和工作组织的五堂课
模拟系统动力学的数字模型越来越多地用于预测未来。尽管多年来,在许多行业的不确定性条件下,建模一直是决策的核心,但新冠肺炎大流行使模型在预测和决策中发挥的作用成为世界各地数百万人的现实。尽管建模是一个专家使用数据和统计数据进行复杂猜测的过程,但大多数消费者都希望模型的预测像水晶球一样,能够提供关于未来的完美信息。在过去的十年里,我们对几个行业的数字建模进行了一系列深入的纵向研究。从这些研究中,我们分享了我们在建模方面学到的五个教训,这些教训证明了(1)为什么模型确实不是水晶球,以及(2)为什么尽管它们具有不确定性,但人们还是倾向于将它们视为水晶球。我们讨论了这些教训中的每一个可以教会我们如何应对新冠肺炎模型以及其他随机过程和事件模型所做的预测,我们今天希望了解这些模型的未来。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
11.20
自引率
1.60%
发文量
18
期刊介绍: Advances in information and communication technologies are associated with a wide and increasing range of social consequences, which are experienced by individuals, work groups, organizations, interorganizational networks, and societies at large. Information technologies are implicated in all industries and in public as well as private enterprises. Understanding the relationships between information technologies and social organization is an increasingly important and urgent social and scholarly concern in many disciplinary fields.Information and Organization seeks to publish original scholarly articles on the relationships between information technologies and social organization. It seeks a scholarly understanding that is based on empirical research and relevant theory.
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