Towards multiagent-based simulation of knowledge management in teams

Today's digital workplaces are characterized by an increase in the amount of required knowledge as well as available information for teams of co-workers. Hence, the question arises: Which knowledge is necessary for team members to effectively and efficiently conduct their tasks in a given work context? To support the design and management of flexible teamwork, this paper integrates perspectives from psychology and business informatics into a multiagent-based simulation model for analyzing and optimizing knowledge practices. It uses the well-known job-shop-scheduling problem as a foundation to simulate the effects of generalist and specialist knowledge structures in teams. The results of the evaluation show that this approach is suitable for reproducing psychological findings about the effects of these structures on a team's work performance. This motivates a discussion of the capabilities and current shortcomings of that simulation model. From that discussion, the paper derives a research agenda for extending the presented approach to a method for designing, analyzing, and optimizing real-world knowledge management strategies of human teams.