Team decision theory and information structures in optimal control problems--Part I

Information structures of organizations are studied and applied to problems of dynamic team decisions. For a causal system it is shown that there is a partially ordered precedence relation existing among the decision makers. The team decision problem with linear information structure and quadratic payoff function is dealt with. The primitive random variables are assumed to be jointly Gaussian. The optimal solutions for the teams in which precedents' information is available for the followers are obtained. It is shown that the well-known linear-quadratic-Gaussian stochastic control problem and static team decision problem are special cases of the structure considered.