1,721,009 research outputs found
Emergence of Organizations out of Garbage Can Dynamics
No full textThe Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice (GCM) is a fundamental model of organizational decision-making originally propossed by J.D. Cohen, J.G. March and J.P. Olsen in 1972. In their model, decisions are made out of random meetings of decision-makers, opportunities, solutions and problems within an organization.
With this model, these very same agents are supposed to meet in society at large where they make decisions according to GCM rules. Furthermore, under certain additional conditions decision-makers, opportunities, solutions and problems form stable organizations. In this artificial ecology organizations are born, grow and eventually vanish with time
Johannes von Kries on Cognition
No full textJohannes von Kries's peculiar views on probability rest on insights that make him a forerunner of the "connectionist revolution" that swept Cognitive Science in the 1980s. In this chapter I illustrate Kries's "synchytic judgements" along with the late Wittgenstein's concept of "family resemblance" for the meaning of words, and compare them with the understanding of mental categories brought about by connectionism
Will Industrial Districts Exploit B2B? A local experience and a general assessment.
Full text linkWhat are the prospects of B2B electronic commerce when production is carried out by a number of small firms specialized in single production phases? Prato, Italy, is home to thousands of textile firms as well as the locus of an early and innovative experience of a local Internet in the mid-1980s. This experience suggests that, since they fear to be imatated by their geographical proximates, geographically clustered firms may lag behind in the exploitation of information and communication technologies. Analysis of today's web sites of Pratese firms confiorms this intuition. A similar analysis of web sites is carried out for producers of fabrics worldwide. Contrary to Europe, in Asian countries geographically clustered firms exhibit little fear of information leakages. Differences in the organization of production may explain this puzzle.ICT, e-commerce, B2B, Textile Industry, Industrial Clusters, Industrial Districts, Prato.
The Investment Acceleration Principle Revisited by Means of a Neural Net
Full text linkThe investment acceleration principle is a heuristic for modeling investment time series out of consumption time series. The model presented herein develops a disaggregated accelerator equation whose coefficients are the weights of a Kohonen neural net that represents firms' decision-making. According to this model, investments take place when managers recognize emerging technological patterns. Furthermore, a technique borrowed from the theory of self-organizing systems is used in order to disentangle innovation-driven investments from plant- replication investments.Accelerator, Investment, Self-Organization, Neural Nets
Utility, Games, and Narratives
No full textThis chapter provides a general overview of theories and tools to model decision-making. In particular, utility maximization and its application to collective decision-making, i.e. Game Theory, are discussed in detail. The most important exemplary games are presented, including the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Game of Chicken and the Minority Game, also known as the El Farol Bar Problem. After discussing the paradoxes and pitfalls of utility maximisation an alternative approach is introduced, which is based on appropriateness of decisions rather than consequences. An assessment of the pros and cons of competing approaches to modelling decision making concludes the chapter
Recognizing Investment Opportunities at the Onset of Recoveries
Full text linkInvestment decision-making is modeled by means of a Kohonen neural net, where neurons represent firms. This is done in order to model investments in novel fields of economic activity, that according to this model are carried out when firms recognize the emergence of a new technological pattern. Combination of the equations of Kohonen model neuron with macroeconomic relationships yields disaggregated accelerator equations with flexible coefficients, that in the aggregate and fixed- coefficients case boil down to traditional accelerator equations. A simulation tests the model in a situation that is remindful of the very beginning of economic recoveries.Accelerator, Investment, Neural Nets, Cognition
Identifying Rivals Among Clustered and Isolated Firms: An empirical investigation and a computational model
No full textWe carried out an empirical investigation among producers of packaging machines collecting information about their rivals, i.e., those few competitors which they closely monitor. We found interesting regularities that take geographically clustered firms apart from isolated firms, that existing theories left unexplained. By constructing an agent-based model we were able to formulate a simple and plausible heuristic for rival selection which is able to generate the empirically observed facts. We submit that this case is exemplary in showing what agent-based models can do, namely, providing sufficiency proofs that help theory-building
Building Pillars Where Bridges are Easy to Imitate - Mediating Technologies in Knowledge-Based Economies
Full text linkWe carried out a qualitative investigation of a pioneer of the Industrial Internet of Things operating in Silicon Valley since 1989. We reconstructed a sequence of strategic turns and conceptualized their current business model in a way that is relevant for several other industries enabled by the Internet, generalizing Thompson’s concept of mediating technologies in order to adapt it to contemporary, knowledge-based economies. We propose an interpretive framework for mediating technologies that we express by means of semantic networks
Agent-Based Models of Industrial Clusters and Districts
Full text linkAgent-based models, an instance of the wider class of connectionist models, allow bottom-up simulations of organizations constituted byu a large number of interacting parts. Thus, geogrfaphical clusters of competing or collaborating firms constitute an obvious field of application. This contribution explains what agent-based models are, reviews applications in the field of industrial clusters and focuses on a simulator of infra- and inter-firm communications.Agent-based models, industrial clusters, industrial districts
Flexibility out of standardization
Full text linkPurpose: This article aims to provide a theoretical unifying framework for flexible organizational forms, such as so-called adhocracies and network organizations. Design/methodology/approach: In this article, organization practices that are typical of the software industry are analyzed and re-interpreted by means of foundational concepts of organization science. It is shown that one and the same logic is at work in all flexible organizations. Findings: Coordination modes can be fruitfully employed to characterize flexible organizations. In particular, standardization is key in order to obtain flexibility, provided that a novel sort of coordination by standardization is added to those that have been conceptualized hitherto. Research limitations/implications: This article highlights one necessary condition for organizations to be flexible. Further aspects, only cursorily mentioned in this paper, need to be addressed in order to obtain a complete picture. Practical implications: A theory of organizational flexibility constitutes a guide for organizational design. This article suggests the non-obvious prescription that the boundary conditions of individual behavior must be standardized in order to achieve operational flexibility. Social implications: This theoretical framework can be profitably employed in management classes. Originality/value: Currently, flexible organizations are only understood in terms of lists of instances. This article shows that apparently heterogeneous case-studies share common features in fact
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