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Book Description

Although complexity makes up the very fabric of our daily lives and has been more or less addressed in a wide variety of knowledge fields, the approaches developed in the Natural Sciences and the results obtained over the past century have not yet permeated Management Sciences very much.

The main features of the phenomena that the Natural Sciences deal with are: non-linear behavior, self-organization and chaos. They are analyzed with the framing of what is called “systems thinking”, popularized by the mindset pertaining to cybernetics. All pioneers in systems thinking either had direct or indirect connections with Biology, which is the discipline considered complex par excellence by the public.

When applying these concepts to Operations Management Systems and modeling organizations by BDI (Beliefs, Desires, Intentions) agents, the lack of predictability in the conduct of change management that is prone to bifurcations (tipping points) in terms of organizational structures and in forecasting future activities, reveals them to be ingrained in the interplay of complexity and chaos.

Table of Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Preface
  3. Dedication
  4. 1 Complexity and Systems Thinking
    1. 1.1. Introduction: complexity as a problem
    2. 1.2. Complexity in perspective
    3. 1.3. System-based current methods proposed for dealing with complexity
    4. 1.4. Systems thinking and structuralism
    5. 1.5. Biodata of two figureheads in the development of cybernetics
    6. 1.6. References
  5. 2 Agent-based Modeling of Human Organizations
    1. 2.1. Introduction
    2. 2.2. Concept of agenthood in the technical world
    3. 2.3. Concept of agenthood in the social world
    4. 2.4. BDI agents as models of organization agents
    5. 2.5. Patterns of agent coordination
    6. 2.6. Negotiation patterns
    7. 2.7. Theories behind the organization theory
    8. 2.8. Organizations and complexity
    9. 2.9. References
  6. 3 Complexity and Chaos
    1. 3.1. Introduction
    2. 3.2. Complexity and chaos in physics and chemistry
    3. 3.3. Order out of chaos
    4. 3.4. Chaos in organizations – the certainty of uncertainty
    5. 3.5. References
  7. Conclusion
  8. Appendices
    1. Appendix 1: Notions of Graph Theory for Analyzing Social Networks
    2. Appendix 2: Time Series Analysis with a View to Deterministic Chaos
  9. Index
  10. End User License Agreement
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