During crises, organizations commonly face communication breakdown and erroneous information. For example, equipment malfunctions, decision mak ers become unavailable, and so on. Such breakdowns should degrade the orga nization's ability to make decisions. However, the design of the organization — who can communicate with whom and who has access to what information- should determine the extent to which organizational performance is degraded by communication breakdowns. In this paper a model of organizational deci sion making when the organization is engaged in tasks so complex that the separate decisions of multiple decision makers must be integrated to locate the organization's decision is developed. Using simulation, the implications of this model for how organizations should be designed to best cope with crisis are examined.
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