Inequalities in the social determinants of health (SDH), which drive avoidable health disparities between different individuals or groups, is a major concern for a number of international organisations, including the World Health Organization (WHO). Despite this, the pathways to changing inequalities in the SDH remain elusive. The methodologies and concepts within system science are now viewed ...

In this paper we consider the co-evolutionary dynamics of IS engagement where episodic change of implementation increasingly occurs within the context of linkages and interdependencies between systems and processes within and across organisations. Although there are many theories that interpret the various motors of change be it lifecycle, teleological, dialectic or evolutionary, our paper atte...

On the basis of reviews on related literatures based on complexity science and complex adaptive system of supply chain management research, the development process of supply chain management has been analyzed, and several advantages to apply complex adaptive system in supply chain management research have been put forward. It has broad application prospects to study the coordination development...

Since 2001, Dutch transition policy has been in place to govern long-term environmental policy for sustainable system innovation. Dutch environmental policy is subject to regular monitoring and policy evaluation, but the development of a conceptually sound evaluation tool for transition policies remains to be resolved. Key difficulties are the systemic character of anticipated changes, the long...

Theoretical study of complex systems receives more and more attention as most sciences broaden their perspectives. The paper first briefly overviews a few important complexity approaches, then it presents a triple-level model for describing and analyzing collaborating enterprises. The environment is treated as a stochastic process, the core topology of the collaboration is represented by a grap...

Complex Learning Communities (CLCs) where diverse groups or individuals come together to gain new knowledge, understanding or skills through social interaction are increasingly being developed to address complex social or economical problems (McDonald 2005a). These learning communities attempt to capitalise on the potential synergy between diverse groups of people to address multiple, diverse a...

Complex adaptive systems (CAS) consist of many interacting and adapting components. Echo is a computational CAS model in which evolving agents are situated in a resource-limited environment. Different views of the notion of species within Echo are compared to biological experiments on relative species abundance, specifically to Preston's "canonical" lognormal distribution. To appear in: Complex...

Some of the most obvious complex adaptive systems are biological. A key concern in biology is how the overall properties of systems relate to the behavior of their components. Competition between these components in the form of an arms race, the “Red Queen effect”, for example, helps explain the trend towards more complex organisms, perhaps the most dramatic of macroevolutionary trends. The Red...