From complexity in the natural sciences to complexity in operations management systems. Volume 1

243 Pages·2019·6.483 MB·English

by  Briffaut, Jean-Pierre

From Complexity in the Natural Sciences to
Complexity in Operations Management Systems

Systems of Systems Complexity Set
coordinated by
Jean-Pierre Briffaut
Volume 1
From Complexity in the
Natural Sciences to
Complexity in Operations
Management Systems

Jean-Pierre Briffaut
First published 2019 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as
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© ISTE Ltd 2019
The rights of Jean-Pierre Briffaut to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by him in
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930116

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-368-4
Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Chapter 1. Complexity and Systems Thinking . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1. Introduction: complexity as a problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2. Complexity in perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.1. Etymology and semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2.2. Methods proposed for dealing with
complexity from the Middle Ages to the
17th Century and their current outfalls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3. System-based current methods proposed for
dealing with complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3.1. Evolution of system-based methods
in the 20th Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.3.2. The emergence of a new science of mind . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.4. Systems thinking and structuralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
1.4.1. Systems thinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.4.2. Structuralism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
1.4.3. Systems modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
1.5. Biodata of two figureheads in the development
of cybernetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
1.5.1. Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901–1972) . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
1.5.2. Heinz von Förster (1911–2002) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
1.6. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
vi Complexity in the Natural Sciences and Operations Management
Chapter 2. Agent-based Modeling
of Human Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
2.2. Concept of agenthood in the technical world . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.2.1. Some words about agents explained . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
2.2.2. Some implementations of the
agenthood paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
2.3. Concept of agenthood in the social world . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.3.1. Cursory perspective of agenthood
in the social world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
2.3.2. Organization as a collection of agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
2.4. BDI agents as models of organization agents . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.4.1. Description of BDI agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
2.4.2. Comments on the structural components
of BDI agents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
2.5. Patterns of agent coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
2.5.1. Organizational coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
2.5.2. Contracting for coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
2.5.3. Coordination by multi-agent planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
2.6. Negotiation patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
2.7. Theories behind the organization theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
2.7.1. Structural and functional theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
2.7.2. Cognitive and behavioral theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
2.7.3. Organization theory and German culture . . . . . . . . . . . 97
2.8. Organizations and complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
2.8.1. Structural complexity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
2.8.2. Behavioral complexity in group
decision-making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
2.8.3. Autonomous agents and complexity in
organization operations: inexorable stretch
to artificial organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
2.9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Chapter 3. Complexity and Chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
3.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
3.2. Complexity and chaos in physics and chemistry . . . . . . . . . 121
3.2.1. Introductory considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
3.2.2. Quadratic iterator modeling the dynamic
behavior of animal and plant populations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
3.2.3. Traces of chaotic behavior in different contexts . . . . . . . 133
Contents vii
3.3. Order out of chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
3.3.1. Determinism out of an apparent
random algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
3.3.2. Chaos game and MRCM (Multiple
Reduction Copy Machine) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
3.3.3. Randomness and its foolery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
3.4. Chaos in organizations – the certainty
of uncertainty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
3.4.1. Chaos and big data: what is data deluge? . . . . . . . . . . 148
3.4.2. Change management and adaptation
of information systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
3.5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Appendix 1. Notions of Graph Theory
for Analyzing Social Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Appendix 2. Time Series Analysis with a
View to Deterministic Chaos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215