In this paper, we describe how traditional systems engineering processes, such as those delineated in the ANSI//EIA 632 standard, are becoming inadequate for today’s complex systems, in which there is a rich set of interconnections and interrelationships between all of the systems in an enterprise. We further suggest that a new discipline (or an extension of the old discipline) is developing in...

This article is interested in how efficiently individuals can use available information, and if this will translate into efficient outcomes at the market level. Our use of available information in markets is further specified by evolutionary psychology and behavioral ecology, which extend core theory and evidence in behavioral finance throughout the reviewed literature. The survey of the social...

This paper discusses the body of knowledge known as complex systems theory and its relevance to manufacturing organizations. It begins by addressing the development of systems thinking, in order to explore the different views on how systems should be studied. This initial commentary provides an introduction to the concepts of the complex systems theory approach, along with its various metaphors...

These questions concern apparent fundamental properties of living systems|properties which, furthermore, seem to be shared by many other complex adaptive systems, such as the global economy. It is especially hard to address these questions, largely because they concern the global emergent behavior of overwhelmingly complex systems. One way to pursue answers is with a certain sort of unrealistic...

John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice is examined from the perspective of experimental methods in economics and complex adaptive systems simulations. This paper first discusses the justice principle selection process in Rawls’s representation of it as a hypothetical experiment. This hypothetical experiment fails to satisfy reasonable experimental controls, particularly as reflects the conception of ...

Systems to be developed in the future will likely be more complex than in the past. The number of behaviors a system can exhibit is one measure of system complexity. A complex system can be described as a large network of communicating subsystems.

The Organic Computing (OC) initiative deals with new design concepts, which facilitate developing technical systems with life-like properties such as self-organisation, self-optimisation and self-configuration in order to make them robust, flexible and adaptive. In this context, a generic observer/controller architecture has been proposed in [RMB06] in order to establish the self-organisation i...

For an information-agent-based system to support virtual (Internet-supported) organisations, changes in environmental conditions often demand changes in organisational behaviour, i.e., organisational changes. As organisational behaviour relates to organisational structure, rethinking the structure of an organisation as environmental conditions demand so, renders such an organisation imperativel...

This report presents a conceptual framework for multi-level modeling of complex sociotechnical systems, provides linkages to the historical roots and technical underpinnings of this framework, and outlines a catalog of component models for populating multi-level models. This includes a description of the “systems movement,” a summary of philosophical underpinnings, a review of seminal concepts,...