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Particle swarm optimization (PSO) has been used to solve many different types of optimization problems. In spite of this, the original version of PSO is not capable to find reasonable solutions for some types of problems. Therefore, novel approaches to deal with more sophisticated problems are required. Many variations of the basic PSO form have been explored, targeting the velocity update equation. Other approaches attempt to change the communication topology inside the swarm. The purpose of this paper is to propose a topology based on the concept of clans.

First of all, this paper presents a detailed description of its proposal. After that, it shows a graphical convergence analysis for the Rosenbrock benchmark function. In the sequence, a convergence analysis for clan PSO with different parameters is performed. A comparison with star, ring, focal, von Neumann and four clusters topologies is also performed.

The paper's simulation results have shown that the proposal obtained better results than the other topologies for the benchmark functions selected for this paper.

The proposed topology for PSO based on clans provides a novel form for information distribution inside the swarm. In this approach, the topology is determined dynamically during the search process, according to the success rate inside each clan.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of clan social capital on the willingness to pay (WTP) and WTP value for collective biogas investment.

Using the Heckman two-stage model and a dataset of 1,265 representative observations from three provinces in Central China collected in 2019, this paper utilizes the contingent valuation method to estimate households' WTP value for collective biogas investment. The paper also explores the heterogeneity between households with different clan governance mechanisms and village governance structures.

The results indicate that clan networks and trust were likely to improve farmer households' WTP, while clan trust and norms could improve their WTP values. For clans with councils and for clans that can influence the decision-making of village committees, their members were more likely to be influenced by the social capital of their clans to pay for collective biogas investment.

This paper focuses on the WTP and WTP values of households for collective biogas investment, which is often neglected in the research. This paper suggests that clans can be used as a medium to urge households to increase their collective power to reduce carbon emissions and climate crises. The findings empirically contribute to efforts to reduce rural carbon emissions.

Organisational clans and tribes are entities that prescribe the behaviour of collaborators on the basis of cultural values and norms. Consequently, this study aims to propose a management tool based on the analysis and interpretation of organisational clans and tribes.

With this purpose, first, the authors review the current status of the discussion about organisational clans and tribes, following a sequential mix-method approach that begins with a bibliometric analysis and end with a content review. Based on these results, in the second stage, the authors propose a conceptual tool that analyses clans and tribes in organisations to create and consolidate alliances. Then in the third stage, the authors apply this tool to the transformation of Medellin – a city that was first conceived as violent and now become a good place to live and travel.

By applying the tool proposed in this study, it is possible to analyse and understand how to transform disagreement into alliance and how clans and tribes – in addition to taking a leading role in organising – are jointly responsible for the results.

Clans and tribes of management are proposed as a tool for organisational management from the analysis and interpretation of clans and tribes in organisations. These clans and tribes of management allow for the intervention of clans and tribes of reference and their consequent emancipation, through organisational clans and tribes that arise naturally, by association or disintegration and that support the management of change required to create effective alliances. Thus, the strategy that should be followed to reinforce the management of changes in organisations is to align alliances with organisational clans and tribes.

Definir los clanes y las tribus organizacionales como aquellos que prescriben el comportamiento de los colaboradores a partir de los valores culturales y las normas, plantea la necesidad de proponer una herramienta de gestión a partir del análisis e interpretación de los clanes y las tribus organizacionales.

Para tal fin, se revisa -a través de un análisis bibliométrico- el estado reciente de la discusión sobre los clanes y las tribus organizacionales. Hasta proponer una herramienta conceptual de fácil aplicación, para la creación y consolidación de alianzas. Esta herramienta es posteriormente verificada para el caso de la transformación de la ciudad de Medellín, que paso de ser reconocida como una ciudad violenta para convertirse en un buen vividero y un destino por descubrir.

Con la aplicación de la herramienta propuesta en este estudio, se logra analizar y comprender como ha sido posible transformar la emancipación en alianza, y como los clanes y las tribus además de tener un rol protagónico en la organización son corresponsables de los resultados obtenidos.

Los clanes y tribus de gestión se proponen como una herramienta para la gestión organizacional que parte del análisis e interpretación de los clanes y tribus en las organizaciones. Estos clanes y tribus de gestión permiten la intervención de clanes y tribus de referencia y su consecuente emancipación, a través de clanes y tribus organizacionales que surgen de forma natural, por asociación o desintegración, y que apoyan la gestión del cambio necesario para crear alianzas efectivas. Así, la estrategia que debe seguirse para reforzar la gestión de los cambios en las organizaciones es alinear las alianzas con los clanes y tribus organizacionales.

This paper aims to identify the impact of Clans and parties on mobilizing and guiding voters in the municipal elections in Palestine, from the point of view of Municipal Council members, especially the municipal elections in Hebron governorate for 2005 and 2017. The Palestinian society in Hebron governorate is characterized by the penetration of parties and clans, and this governorate is one of the most clan-based Palestinian provinces. It also relies on clans to run its social and political system as well as managing and shaping the guiding of its citizens.

The quantitative research method was used in this study, and the study population is consisted of members of the municipal councils in Hebron governorate, especially the councils classified (A, B).Whereas, the municipalities classified under category (A) are the ones in the center of the governorate, and the municipalities classified under category (B) are the most in the population. The study depended on a purposive sample of (200) Municipal Council members, including 100 municipal councilors in 2005 and 100 municipal councilors in 2017. The survey was conducted in the academic year (2018–2019). The method Four–Jurors (Reviewers) was used in collecting data.

The results of the study showed that clans and political parties are among the most prominent means of mobilizing and guiding voters in Palestine. The field study indicated thact clans and parties had a high impact on the mobilization and guiding of voters in the municipal elections in Hebron governorate in 2005 and 2017. This is due to the unity of the clan, its association with political parties and the overlapping between the clan and the party. Parties have also penetrated the Palestinian society besides its support to people who are loyal even it did not choose them in the elections. Moreover, many members of the electoral blocs are attributing themselves to the parties to gain their support in elections. Although Hamas did not participate in the 2017 elections, it had an impact on the electoral process by guiding its members not to elect Fatah blocs in the elections, or to support those who are close to this movement.

This study can be regarded as an introduction to identify the impact of clans and parties on mobilizing and guiding voters in the municipal elections in Palestine. Comparing that effect between the 2005 and 2017 elections, to find out how the strength of clans and parties differs in guiding their voters depending on the time period, as well as the ability of clans and parties to make political change by its influence on the political participation of its citizens.

To provide a mechanism for agents to form, maintain, and reason within medium‐term coalitions, called clans, based upon the notions of trust and motivation.

The model is based upon the notions of trust (representing an agent's assessment of another's honesty and reliability) and motivations (which represent an agent's high‐level goals). The paper describes the motivational factors that can lead to clan formation, a mechanism for agents to form a clan or join an existing clan, and subsequently how clan membership influences behaviour (in particular though sharing information and acting on behalf of other members). Finally, describes the conditions under which agents leave a clan.

The proposed mechanism shows how agents can form medium‐term clans with trusted agents based on motivations that are essentially self‐interested. It is shown how this mechanism can be used to reduce missed opportunities for cooperation, improve scalability, reduce the failure rate and allow sharing of trust information (i.e. establish a notion of reputation).

Proposes a new approach to coalition formation based on the notions of trust and motivation, which allows self‐interested agents to form medium‐term coalitions (called clans) to increase their own (motivational) returns.

Team social capital (TSC) has been attracting increasing research attention aiming to explore team effectiveness through within- and cross-team resource conduits. This study bridges two disconnected theories – TSC and evolutionary theory – to examine gaming clans and analyzes mechanisms of the clans' TSC building from an evolutionary perspective.

This research draws longitudinal data from a sample of gaming teams (N = 1,267) from anonymized player data from the game World of Tanks spanning 32 months. The authors explored teams' evolutionary patterns using hidden Markov models and applied longitudinal multilevel modeling to test hypotheses.

The results showed that teams of different sizes and levels of evolutionary fitness vary in team closure and bridging social capital. The authors also found that larger teams are more effective than smaller ones. The positive association between team-bridging social capital and effectiveness is more substantial for smaller teams.

This research advances the theoretical development of TSC by including the constructs of teams' evolutionary status when analyzing strategic social capital building. Adding to existing literature studying the outcome of TSC, this research also found a moderating effect of team size between TSC and effectiveness. Finally, this study also contributes to a longitudinal view of TSC and found significant evolutionary patterns of teams' membership, TSC, and effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze long-term institutional causes and consequences of preference falsification by studying the evolution of China’s patriarchal clan system.

The historic study shows that although the clan system was abolished in the Qin dynasty, it re-emerged among high-standing families in the Han dynasty and spread to common people after the Tang dynasty.

The author submits that the clan system was an institutional response to the preference falsification problem that arose due to the dictatorial political institutions first established in the Qin dynasty. It helped people to take collective action by themselves and also opened a back door to influence government decisions. A piece of clear evidence is the co-evolution of the clan system and government personnel system.

In this sense, the clan system probably also helped to prolong the political institutions for 2,000 years.

This is the first institutional study on the clan system in China.

Compared to other areas in China, Chaoshan region in Guangdong province has a more developed clan system set within a rural landscape. This paper aims to explore the relationship between the social structure (family–clan) and spatial form (housing settlement) of clan-organized rural China to understand the spatial form represented by “family and clan.”

By examining Dongli village and Huayao village, this paper outlines the typical path of spatial representation: dwelling of individual’s core family → mansion of the big family → settlement of a single clan → co-settlement of several clans. Moreover, it identifies three critical elements of the spatial representation: prototype (the spatial representation of the etiquette system); order (a hierarchical space set by the patriarchal system); and boundary (constructed on both physical and mental facts).

All elements indicate that descendants of migrants from the North maintain their self-identity and discipline clan members by planning the ideal space.

The findings contribute to the ongoing discussions regarding how local cultural and historical experiences can influence renewed designs of traditional settlement areas (Aksulu and Eryildiz, 2003) and how digital means can facilitate updating designs of traditional buildings (Han et al., 2017). Such planning and design should involve greater public participation, considering the impact on residents’ daily lives (Pandya, 2005).

This paper contributes to the understanding of the relationship between cultural values and the spatial form of residential settlements in Chinese history.

The fundamental component of Confucian culture is clan culture, which stresses that family ties are the most important of all social relationships and have an essential impact on the governance model of family firms in Southeast Asian countries, especially in China. This study investigates complex relationships among family firm succession and corporate governance reform in the context of Chinese clan culture.

Drawing upon the analysis of altruistic behavior and conflict in succession process in family firm, the study uses a moderation model to capture the relationships between succession and governance reform in the context of clan culture. This study conducts an empirical study on 295 Chinese listed family firms that initiated intergenerational succession from 2008 to 2018 to test the model.

The empirical results suggest that the different stages of the succession will positively affect the family firm's governance reform, whether it is the stage in which the successor takes over the firm or the stage in which the successor completely controls the firm. Furthermore, the succession-governance reform relationship is negatively moderated by the clan concept of the actual controller.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how succession in the family firm can accelerate corporate governance reform (transition from relation-based governance to rule-based governance). The research results provide evidence from the firm-level under the Chinese clan culture context to understand the complex relationship between succession and corporate governance.

The rise of the sharing economy has brought with it a huge variety of new organizational forms and innovative business models. An integral part of these forms and models is the communities and members of sharing-economy organizations, since they significantly contribute to value creation for these organizations. Relying on community member contributions, though, is a challenge for these organizations because fluid community boundaries and voluntary membership makes it difficult to coordinate their activities. This chapter investigates the under-researched question of how sharing-economy organizations govern the actions of their community members. Following an abductive approach that included site visits, participant observations, and 67 interviews, we develop a framework that illustrates four different types of governance: pure market, pure clan, market-hierarchy hybrid, and clan-hierarchy hybrid. The framework explains differences among these types depending on the main activity (providing resources or producing jointly) and the primary aim of the community (business orientation or social orientation). This study thus contributes to research on both governance in general and to sharing-economy organizations in particular by capturing the variety and diversity of community forms, governance practices, and business-model configurations.