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Multi-Agent and Multi-Agent-Based Simulation ; Joint Workshop MABS 2004
The aim of the workshop was to provide a forum for work in both appli- tions of multi-agent-based simulation and the technical challenges of simulating large multi-agent systems (MAS). There has been considerable recent progress in modelling and analyzing multi-agent systems, and in techniques that apply MAS models to complex real-world systems such as social systems and organi- tions. Simulation is an increasingly important strand that weaves together this work. In high-risk, high-cost situations, simulations provide critical cost/benefit leverage, and make possible explorations that cannot be carried out in situ: – Multi-agent approaches to simulating complex systems are keytools in interdisciplinary studies of social systems. Agent-based social simulation (ABSS) research simulates and synthesizes social behavior in order to understand real social systems with properties of self-organization, scalability, robustness, and openness. – In the MAS community, simulation has been applied to awide range of MAS research and design problems, from models of complex individual agents - ploying sophisticated internal mechanisms to models of large-scale societies of relatively simple agents which focus more on the interactions between agents.
Enabling Social Europe
The study is distinguished by a unique collaboration of social and economic policy experts coming from a wide range of disciplines: economics, law, sociology, political science, and philosophy. The authors seek to shed new light on whether European social policy ought to play a role in the future and, if so, what sort of role that could be. They convincingly argue that despite an implicit normative consensus on the ‘European social model’, there is still room for a multifaceted world in which welfare regimes can maintain their own path-dependent ways of achieving a fair and just society with a high level of welfare for all.
Ecology of Social Evolution
This book brings together renowned researchers working on sociality in different animals. For the first time, they compile the evidence for the importance of ecological factors in the evolution of social life, ranging from invertebrate to vertebrate social systems, and evaluate its importance versus that of relatedness. Answers are given to important questions such as: - Which factors favour group living in social invertebrates and vertebrates? - Are there general differences in the evolutionary forces promoting social life in social insects versus cooperatively breeding vertebrates? - Why are there only so few eusocial vertebrates? - Can relatedness within social groups be a by-product arising from the fact that neighbours are generally kin?
Dialogue as a Collective Means of Design Conversation
Dialogue as a Collective Means of Design Conversation is the second volume edited by Patrick M. Jenlink and Bela H. Banathy to offer a cross-disciplinary approach to examining dialogue as a communicative medium. In this Compendium, the contributing authors set forth their ideas, experiences, and perspectives as the path of a learning journey—a journey of new meaning, of new understanding, and of becoming self-aware of design conversation as future creating and consciousness evolving. In particular, this volume comes at a time when we as a global society are faced with the question of how we shape our actions and in turn shape our future, through conversation that is focused on resolving global conflict and fostering world peace. The volume evokes in the reader a realization that our greatest potential rests, in no small measure, with our collective capacity for cultural creativity and in our capacity to achieve new levels of consciousness through dialogue and design conversation.
Coordination, organizations, institutions, and norms in agent system III ; COIN 2007 International Workshops COIN@AAMAS 2007, Honolulu, HI, USA, May 14, 2007 COIN@MALLOW 2007, Durham, UK, September 3-4, 2007 Revised Selected Papers
This book constitutes the refereed post-workshop proceedings of the International Workshop on Coordination, Organization, Institutions and Norms in Agent Systems, COIN 2007.
Coordination, organizations, institutions, and norms in agent system ; AAMAS 2005 International Workshops on Agents, Norms, and Institutions for Regulated Multiagent Systems, ANIREM 2005 and on organizations in multi-agent systems, OOOP 2005, Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 25-26, 2005, Revised Selected Papers
This book constitutes the refereed post-proceedings of the International Workshop on Agents, Norms and Institutions for Regulated Multiagent Systems, ANIREM 2005, and the International Workshop on Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems, OOOP 2005, held in Utrecht, The Netherlands, July 2005.
Constructal Theory of Social Dynamics
Constructal Theory of Social Dynamics brings together for the first time social scientists and engineers to develop a predictive theory of social organization, as a conglomerate of mating flows that morph in time to flow more easily (people, goods, money, energy, information). These flows have objectives (e.g., minimization of effort, travel time, cost), and the objectives clash with global constraints (space, time, resources). The result is organization (flow architecture) derived from one principle of configuration evolution in time (the constructal law): "for a flow system to persist in time, its configuration must morph such that it provides easier access to its streams."
Collective Beings
With collective behaviors playing a fundamental role in many scientific and technical disciplines, COLLECTIVE BEINGS focuses its attention on socio-economic applications to be used, the book provides the reader with deep insights into modern conceptual tools of economy based on systemics.
Browning Agents and Active Particles : Collective Dynamics in the Natural and Social Sciences
Lays out a vision for a coherent framework for understanding complex systems'' (from the foreword by J. Doyne Farmer). By developing the genuine idea of Brownian agents, the author combines concepts from informatics, such as multiagent systems, with approaches of statistical many-particle physics. This way, an efficient method for computer simulations of complex systems is developed which is also accessible to analytical investigations and quantitative predictions. The book demonstrates that Brownian agent models can be successfully applied in many different contexts, ranging from physicochemical pattern formation, to active motion and swarming in biological systems, to self-assembling of networks, evolutionary optimization, urban growth, economic agglomeration and even social systems.
Alternatives Considered But Not Disclosed : The Ambiguous Role of PowerPoint in Cross-Project Learning
This study investigates the role of PowerPoint in organizational communication, particularly in terms of a functional dilemma between its application for documentation as opposed to presentation purposes. The theoretical part of the analysis combines insights from both organizational communication studies (J. R. Taylor et al.) and social systems theory (N. Luhmann et al.). The empirical analysis shows that PowerPoint documents created for cross-project learning purposes contribute to an invisibilization rather than a visibilization of decision processes and their contingency.
Advancing Social Simulation: The First World Congress
Agent-based modeling and social simulation have emerged as both developments of and challenges to the social sciences. The developments include agent-based computational economics and investigations of theoretical sociological concepts using formal simulation techniques. Among the challenges are the development of qualitative modeling techniques, implementation of agent-based models to investigate phenomena for which conventional economic, social, and organizational models have no face validity, and the application of physical modeling techniques to social processes. Bringing together diverse approaches to social simulation and research agendas.
A Theory of Marketing : Outline of a Social Systems Perspective
Marketing has become one of the most influential forces in contemporary market economies. Yet despite ubiquitous empirical presence, uncountable textbook definitions, and sixty years of scholarly work, a coherent sociological understanding of this powerful concept is still amiss. Drawing on Luhmannian social systems theory, historical analysis, and four qualitative studies, the author theorizes on the marketing function as a self-contained system of communications. It is argued that marketing systems prosper within a host organization if and as long as they successfully influence observers' preferences towards particular brands. On these conceptual foundations a comprehensive brand- and communication-centered theory is developed that fulfills Alderson', Cox' and Bartels' foundational requirements for a general theory of marketing in an unprecedented way.
