Download or read book Self Organization and Management of Social Systems written by H. Ulrich and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-organization of systems belonging to quite different discipl ines has been a central topic of synergetics since its beginning. I am therefore particularly plea sed that Hans Ulrich and Gilbert Probst have not only undertaken to organize an interdisciplinary meeting on Self-Organization and Management of Social Systems, but have also edited these articles written by leading scientists after and based upon that symposium. While the previous volumes of the Springer Series in Synergetics were mainly de voted to physical, chemical and biological systems, with only the book by W. Weidlich and G. Haag deal i ng with "Quant i tat i ve Soc i 01 ogy" (Spri nger Ser. Syn., Vo 1. 14), the present volume opens a new perspective. As the reader will notice, the multitude of facets of self-organization is well reflected by various authors belonging to different discipl ines and representing different schools of thought. When such a wide scope of fields - ranging from phy sics to sociology - is covered, it is not surprising that the existence of a "hiatus" between sociology and the natural sciences was felt by some participants.

Download or read book Informal Coalitions written by C. Rodgers and published by Springer. This book was released on 2006-10-10 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book places everyday talk and role-modelling interactions at the forefront of an alternative change-leadership agenda, and introduces a number of practical approaches to help line managers and organizational specialists deliver this agenda more successfully. It is essential reading for organizational practitioners at all levels.

Download or read book Self organising Multi agent Systems Algorithmic Foundations Of Cyber anarcho socialism written by Jeremy Pitt and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The paradigm of self-organisation is fundamental to theories of collective action in economic science and democratic governance in political science. Self-organisation in these social systems critically depends on voluntary compliance with conventional rules: that is, rules which are made up, mutually agreed, and modifiable 'on the fly'. How, then, can we use the self-organisation observed in such social systems as an inspiration for decentralised computer systems, which can face similar problems of coordination, cooperation and collaboration between autonomous peers?Self-Organising Multi-Agent Systems presents an innovative and systematic approach to transforming theories of economics and politics (and elements of philosophy, psychology, and jurisprudence) into an executable logical specification of conventional rules. It shows how sets of such rules, called institutions, provide an algorithmic basis for designing and implementing cyber-physical systems, enabling intelligent software processes (called agents) to manage themselves in the face of competition for scarce resources. It also provides a basis for implementing socio-technical systems with interacting human and computational intelligences in a way that is sustainable, fair and legitimate.This interdisciplinary book is essential reading for anyone interested in the 'planned emergence' of global properties, commonly-shared values or successful collective action, especially as a product of social construction, knowledge management and political arrangements. For those studying both computer science and social sciences, this book offers a radically new gateway to a transformative understanding of complex system development and social system modelling.Understanding how a computational representation of qualitative values like justice and democracy can lead to stability and legitimacy of socio-technical systems is among the most pressing software engineering challenges of modern times. This book can be read as an invitation to make the Digital Society better.Related Link(s)

Download or read book Self Organization in Biological Systems written by Scott Camazine and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The synchronized flashing of fireflies at night. The spiraling patterns of an aggregating slime mold. The anastomosing network of army-ant trails. The coordinated movements of a school of fish. Researchers are finding in such patterns--phenomena that have fascinated naturalists for centuries--a fertile new approach to understanding biological systems: the study of self-organization. This book, a primer on self-organization in biological systems for students and other enthusiasts, introduces readers to the basic concepts and tools for studying self-organization and then examines numerous examples of self-organization in the natural world. Self-organization refers to diverse pattern formation processes in the physical and biological world, from sand grains assembling into rippled dunes to cells combining to create highly structured tissues to individual insects working to create sophisticated societies. What these diverse systems hold in common is the proximate means by which they acquire order and structure. In self-organizing systems, pattern at the global level emerges solely from interactions among lower-level components. Remarkably, even very complex structures result from the iteration of surprisingly simple behaviors performed by individuals relying on only local information. This striking conclusion suggests important lines of inquiry: To what degree is environmental rather than individual complexity responsible for group complexity? To what extent have widely differing organisms adopted similar, convergent strategies of pattern formation? How, specifically, has natural selection determined the rules governing interactions within biological systems? Broad in scope, thorough yet accessible, this book is a self-contained introduction to self-organization and complexity in biology--a field of study at the forefront of life sciences research.

Download or read book Impact Networks written by David Ehrlichman and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world. The social and environmental challenges we face today are not only complex, they are also systemic and structural and have no obvious solutions. They require diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear. Even so, collaborative efforts often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity with traditional strategic plans, created by hierarchies that ignore the way people naturally connect. By embracing a living-systems approach to organizing, impact networks bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe. David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.

Download or read book The Emergence of Leadership written by Douglas Griffin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complexity perspective on leadership, this book considers factors such as risk and conflict, spontaneity and motivation, bullying and the use/abuse of power to express a new view of business ethics.

Download or read book Design and Control of Self organizing Systems written by Carlos Gershenson and published by CopIt ArXives. This book was released on 2007-09-05 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complex systems are usually difficult to design and control. There are several particular methods for coping with complexity, but there is no general approach to build complex systems. In this book I propose a methodology to aid engineers in the design and control of complex systems. This is based on the description of systems as self-organizing. Starting from the agent metaphor, the methodology proposes a conceptual framework and a series of steps to follow to find proper mechanisms that will promote elements to find solutions by actively interacting among themselves.

Download or read book Constructing Organizational Life written by Thomas B. Lawrence and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the social sciences, scholars are increasingly showing how people 'work' to construct organizational life, including the rules and routines that shape and enable organizational activity, the identities of people who occupy organizations, and the societal norms and assumptions that provide the context for organizational action. The idea of work emphasizes the ways in which people and groups engage in purposeful, reflexive efforts rooted in an awareness of organizational life as constructed in human interaction and changeable through human effort. Studies of these efforts have identified new forms of work including emotion work, identity work, boundary work, strategy work, institutional work, and a host of others. Missing in these conversations, however, is a recognition that these forms of work are all part of a broader phenomenon driven by historical shifts that began with modernity and dramatically accelerated through the twentieth century. This book introduces the social-symbolic work perspective, which addresses this broader phenomenon. The social-symbolic work perspective integrates diverse streams of research to examine how people purposefully and reflexively work to construct organizational life, including the identities, technologies, boundaries, and strategies that constitute their organizations. In this book, the authors define social-symbolic work and introduce three forms - self work, organization work, and institutional work. Social-symbolic work highlights people's efforts to construct the social world, and focuses attention on the motivations, practices, resources, and effects of those efforts. This book explores eight distinct streams of social-symbolic work research, drawing on a broad range of examples from the worlds of business, politics, sports, social movements, and many others. It provides researchers, students, and practitioners with an integrative theoretical framework useful in understanding social-symbolic work, a survey of the main forms of social-symbolic work, a rich set of theoretical opportunities to inspire new studies, and practical methodological guidance for empirical research on social-symbolic work.

Download or read book Social Self Organization written by Dirk Helbing and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-05-05 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What are the principles that keep our society together? This question is even more difficult to answer than the long-standing question, what are the forces that keep our world together. However, the social challenges of humanity in the 21st century ranging from the financial crises to the impacts of globalization, require us to make fast progress in our understanding of how society works, and how our future can be managed in a resilient and sustainable way. This book can present only a few very first steps towards this ambitious goal. However, based on simple models of social interactions, one can already gain some surprising insights into the social, ``macro-level'' outcomes and dynamics that is implied by individual, ``micro-level'' interactions. Depending on the nature of these interactions, they may imply the spontaneous formation of social conventions or the birth of social cooperation, but also their sudden breakdown. This can end in deadly crowd disasters or tragedies of the commons (such as financial crises or environmental destruction). Furthermore, we demonstrate that classical modeling approaches (such as representative agent models) do not provide a sufficient understanding of the self-organization in social systems resulting from individual interactions. The consideration of randomness, spatial or network interdependencies, and nonlinear feedback effects turns out to be crucial to get fundamental insights into how social patterns and dynamics emerge. Given the explanation of sometimes counter-intuitive phenomena resulting from these features and their combination, our evolutionary modeling approach appears to be powerful and insightful. The chapters of this book range from a discussion of the modeling strategy for socio-economic systems over experimental issues up the right way of doing agent-based modeling. We furthermore discuss applications ranging from pedestrian and crowd dynamics over opinion formation, coordination, and cooperation up to conflict, and also address the response to information, issues of systemic risks in society and economics, and new approaches to manage complexity in socio-economic systems. Selected parts of this book had been previously published in peer reviewed journals.

Download or read book Selforganization written by W. Krohn and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: may be complex without being able to be replaced by something »still more simple«. This became evident with the help of computer models of deterministic-recursive systems in which simple mathematical equation systems provide an extremely complex behavior. (2) Irregularity of nature is not treated as an anomaly but becomes the focus of research and thus is declared to be normal. One looks for regularity within irregularity. Non-equilibrium processes are recognized as the source of order and the search for equilibrium is replaced by the search for the dynamics of processes. (3) The classical system-environment model, according to which the adaptation of a system to its environment is controlled externally and according to which the adaptation of the system occurs in the course of a learning process, is replaced by a model of systemic closure. This closure is operational in so far as the effects produced by the system are the causes for the maintenance of systemic organization. If there is sufficient complexity, the systems perform internal self-observation and exert self-control (»Cognition« as understood by Maturana as self-perception and self-limitation, e. g. , that of a cell vis-a. -vis its environment). 22 But any information a system provides on its environment is a system-internal construct. The »reference to the other« is merely a special case of »self-reference«. The social sciences frequently have suffered from the careless way in which scientific ideas and models have been transferred.

Download or read book International Encyclopedia of Civil Society written by Helmut K. Anheier and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 1722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently the topic of civil society has generated a wave of interest, and a wealth of new information. Until now no publication has attempted to organize and consolidate this knowledge. The International Encyclopedia of Civil Society fills this gap, establishing a common set of understandings and terminology, and an analytical starting point for future research. Global in scope and authoritative in content, the Encyclopedia offers succinct summaries of core concepts and theories; definitions of terms; biographical entries on important figures and organizational profiles. In addition, it serves as a reliable and up-to-date guide to additional sources of information. In sum, the Encyclopedia provides an overview of the contours of civil society, social capital, philanthropy and nonprofits across cultures and historical periods. For researchers in nonprofit and civil society studies, political science, economics, management and social enterprise, this is the most systematic appraisal of a rapidly growing field.

Download or read book Self Organization and Society written by Takatoshi Imada and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-organization is a generic term describing the capacity of a system to change its own structure by itself while interacting with the environment. In this sense, self-organization is not environment-determined or environment-adaptive, but is self-determined and self-adaptive. The concept of self-organization was born in the 1960s, and attempts were made to establish a theory based on the logic of a system and its control. In contrast, the 1980s introduced a view based on the logic of creative individuals and on fluctuations. Antithetical differences exist between the two. The former regards the system of aggregated individuals as the object of consideration, where self-organization is the sum of the practices of a system led by control, or self-control in particular. The latter focuses on the practices of individuals deviating from the logic of a system, making the existing system fluctuate and transforming its structure. This volume attempts to integrate these viewpoints through inquiry into the structure of the self and through self-reflexion. A new horizon thus opens for the synthesis of planning/control action theory and spontaneous/performative action theory.

Download or read book Project Management at the Edge of Chaos written by Alfred Oswald and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-21 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Complexity is a gift that can be made available for the successful implementation of projects, and used to create a new order or to change an existing one. Based on scientific facts, the authors present a systematic approach, which integrates complexity and its multitude of facets and gives practical recommendations for dealing with complexity in projects. The methods paradigm in project management is currently undergoing a massive upheaval. Projects are complex entities that cannot be tackled using traditional methods, such as classical cause and effect approaches. Complexity, and the associated phenomenon of self-organization, is a natural, but hidden designer. It offers a great opportunity in its use as a key driver for the implementation of projects. This requires identification of the principles of complexity and then using these for project management. In this book, the latest findings from natural sciences and brain research are used and transferred within a practice-oriented framework. The authors describe the methods of complexity regulation in projects and how self-organization for the management of projects can be applied.

Download or read book Dynamic Patterns written by J. A. Scott Kelso and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: foreword by Hermann Haken For the past twenty years Scott Kelso's research has focused on extending the physical concepts of self- organization and the mathematical tools of nonlinear dynamics to understand how human beings (and human brains) perceive, intend, learn, control, and coordinate complex behaviors. In this book Kelso proposes a new, general framework within which to connect brain, mind, and behavior.Kelso's prescription for mental life breaks dramatically with the classical computational approach that is still the operative framework for many newer psychological and neurophysiological studies. His core thesis is that the creation and evolution of patterned behavior at all levels--from neurons to mind--is governed by the generic processes of self-organization. Both human brain and behavior are shown to exhibit features of pattern-forming dynamical systems, including multistability, abrupt phase transitions, crises, and intermittency. Dynamic Patterns brings together different aspects of this approach to the study of human behavior, using simple experimental examples and illustrations to convey essential concepts, strategies, and methods, with a minimum of mathematics. Kelso begins with a general account of dynamic pattern formation. He then takes up behavior, focusing initially on identifying pattern-forming instabilities in human sensorimotor coordination. Moving back and forth between theory and experiment, he establishes the notion that the same pattern-forming mechanisms apply regardless of the component parts involved (parts of the body, parts of the nervous system, parts of society) and the medium through which the parts are coupled. Finally, employing the latest techniques to observe spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity, Kelso shows that the human brain is fundamentally a pattern forming dynamical system, poised on the brink of instability. Self-organization thus underlies the cooperative action of neurons that produces human behavior in all its forms.

Download or read book Artificial Economics and Self Organization written by Stephan Leitner and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents recent advances in the dynamic field of Artificial Economics and its various applications. Artificial Economics provides a structured approach to model and investigate economic and social systems. In particular, this approach is based on the use of agent-based simulations and further computational techniques. The main aim is to analyze the outcomes at the overall systems’ level as results from the agents’ behavior at the micro-level. These emergent characteristics of complex economic and social systems can neither be foreseen nor are they intended. The emergence rather makes these systems function. Artificial Economics especially facilitates the investigation of this emergent systems’ behavior. ​

Download or read book Self organization of Matter written by Christian Jooss and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-07-06 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-organization of matter is observed in every context and on all scales, from the nanoscale of quantum fields and subatomic particles to the macroscale of galaxy superclusters. This book analyzes the wide range of patterns of organization present in nature, highlighting their similarities rather than their differences. This unconventional approach results in an illuminating read which should be part of any Physics student's background.

Download or read book Management Lives written by David Knights and published by SAGE. This book was released on 1999-08-30 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: `The authors bring a spark of vitality and life to an area that could be cynically viewed as a series of conflicting fads and fashions....I would recommend anyone in the process of reviewing or designing an entrepreneurship development course to consider the benefits that this book would bring to the teaching process′ - Entrepreneurship and Innovation `Using fiction in the classroom as an approach to stimulating the study of people in organizations is well-established. What this book contributes is a way of exploring some of the existential elements of life in organizations, which are typically difficult to study. It will be on my reading lists. Hopefully, this example, and regrettably few others which exist, will contribute in the long term to the reformulation of how the lived experience of organizational life may be explored in the classroom′ - Leadership & Organization Development Journal Based on courses taught by the authors over many years, this innovative text is a lively and accessible analysis of people at work and the problems they have to confront. The student is introduced to a range of key themes in management such as: power and identity; consumption and bureaucracy; rational choice and meaning all through the medium of characters and situations in contemporary literature. The clear theoretical framework, supported by footnotes, summaries and further reading guides, makes this an introduction to management the student will find useful as well as enjoyable.