[agents] Emergence: Complexity & Organization Issue 10.1 Published

[Kurt A Richardson]

Untitled Document




Dear colleague 

I am pleased to announce a special event in the development of the international 
journal Emergence: Complexity & Organization - the publication of the first 
issue of Volume 10.  The contents of Issue 10.1 are listed below. 

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Kindest regards,

Kurt Richardson
 Managing Editor



Volume 10 Issue 1 2008 Contents

Editorial

Editorial
Peter M. Allen (PDF)


 General Papers
Organizations as Universal Computing Machines:
 Rule Systems, Computational Equivalence, and Organizational Complexity
Mihnea Moldoveanu (PDF)
Organizations can be—and, have been—modeled as rule-based systems. On a reductive 
view, the resulting models depict organizations as cellular automata (CA) that 
carry out computations whose inputs are the initial and boundary conditions 
of a lattice of elements co-evolving according to deterministic interaction 
rules and whose outputs are the final states of the CA lattice. We use such 
models to refine the notion of the complexity of an organizational phenomenon 
and entertain the notion of an organization as a universal computer that can 
support a wide variety of CA to suggest ways in which CA-derived insights can 
inform organizational analysis. We examine the informational and computational 
properties of CA rules and the implications of the trade-off between their 
informational and computational complexity to the problem of ‘organizational 
design’ and show how the discovery of operational rules could proceed in the 
context of an empirical framework. 

Getting Past Conflict Resolution: A Complexity View of Conflict
Leticia Andrade, Donde Ashmos Plowman & Dennis Duchon (PDF)
The traditional view of conflict, as a problematic condition always requiring 
reduction or elimination and whose conditions or outcomes can be predicted, 
is incompatible with a complex adaptive systems view of organizations. Thus, 
conventional approaches to reducing conflict are often futile because the fundamental 
properties of complex adaptive systems are the source of much organizational 
‘conflict.’ In this paper we offer an alternative view of conflict as pattern 
fluctuations in complex adaptive systems. Rather than needing reduction or 
elimination, conflict is the fuel that drives system growth and enables learning 
and adaptive behaviors, making innovation possible. Instead of focusing on 
conflict reduction, managers are advised to encourage mindfulness, improvisation, 
and reconfiguration as responses to conflict that enable learning and effective 
adaptation.

Design for Social Systems: Change as ConversationRobert Simpson & Roderic Gill 
(PDF)
This paper explores the application of new approaches in organizational development 
and institutional economics to a communicative design process with application 
in design of social systems. Theory from four authors is investigated and applied 
to a generalized case study.


 Complexity and Philosophy
An Epistemology of Learning ThroughAliki Nicolaides & Lyle Yorks (PDF)
The purpose of this paper is to initiate a conversation exploring the epistemological 
implications of the many forms that learning may take while attending to the 
demands generated by complexity. This paper offers a look at an emerging epistemology 
of learning through life that is increasingly complex and intensifying the 
demands on our thinking, feeling and action. In this paper we examine the interconnections 
between learning through experience, the construction of meaning, the process 
of inquiry and complexity. Specifically, the implications of continuity and 
interactivity as developed in adult learning theory, the construction of meaning 
as discussed by constructive developmental theory, the process of inquiry as 
developed by developmental action inquiry, and the relational aspects of interdependence 
as presented in complexity theory for addressing the challenges confronting 
contemporary systems. 
 Classic Complexity
 The Meanings of ‘Emergence’ and Its Modes
Arthur O. Lovejoy (with an introduction by Alicia Juarrero and Carl A. Rubino)(PDF)


 Forum
 Adjacent opportunities: The Great Depression of the New Millennium
Ron Schultz (PDF)

Empowerment: Chapter 1 (of 10) - Universal TruthsMichael Shenker (PDF)

Scientist and Entrepreneur:
 A Chat with Ernesto Illy on Coffee, Complexity and PrigoginePierpaolo Andriani 
& Alberto De Toni (PDF)


 Book Reviews (PDF) A Review of "Niklas Luhmann and Organization Studies"
Robert Simpson

A Review of "Managing Information in Complex Organizations: Semiotics and Signals, 
Complexity and Chaos"Ivo P. Janecka

A Review of "The Third Lens: Multi-Ontology Sense-Making and Strategic Decision-Making"
Ray Cooksey

Calling Notices and Announcements