Search results

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the influence exerted on the thought of F.A. Hayek by the work of the biologist and founder of system theory, Ludwig von Bertalanffy. The author’s methodology includes textual analysis and archival work. It is argued first of all that Bertalanffy provided Hayek with a conceptual framework in terms of which he could articulate the philosophical significance of his theoretical psychology. In particular, Bertalanffy’s work afforded Hayek a set of concepts that helped him to articulate the relationship between mental and physical events – that is, between mind and body – implied by his theory. The second part of the chapter builds on the first by exploring how Hayek subsequently applied the abstract conceptual framework or ontology set out by Bertalanffy to the economy. In this way, Bertalanffy’s ideas helped Hayek to articulate and shape his emerging view of the economy as a complex adaptive system, which consists of different ‘levels of organisation’, which displays ‘structural’ or ‘emergent properties’, and which evolves over time on the basis of those group-level properties.

The purpose of this article is to clarify current and widespread misconceptions about the properties of blockchain technologies and to describe challenges and avenues for correct and trustworthy design and implementation of distributed ledger system (DLS) or Technology (DLT).

The authors contrast the properties of a blockchain with desired, however emergent, properties of a DLS, which is a complex and distributed system. They point out and justify, with facts and analysis, current misconceptions about the blockchain and DLSs. They describe challenges that these systems will need to address and possible solution avenues for achieving trustworthiness.

Many of the statements that have appeared on the internet, news and academic articles, such as immutable ledger and exact copies, may be misleading. These are desired emergent properties of a complex system, not assured properties. It is well-known within the distributed systems and critical software community that it is extremely hard to prove that a complex system correctly and completely implements emergent properties. Further research and development for trustworthy DLS design and implementation is needed, both practical and theoretical.

This is the first known published attempt at describing current misconceptions about blockchain technologies. Further collaborative work, discussions, potential solutions, evaluations, resulting publications and verified reference implementations are needed to ensure DLTs are safe, secure, and trustworthy.

Interdisciplinary teams with members from academia, business and industry, and from disciplines such as business, entrepreneurship, theoretical and practical computer science, cybersecurity, finance, mathematics and statistics, must be formed. Such teams must collaborate with the objective of developing strategies and techniques for ensuring the correctness and security of future DLSs in which our society may become dependent.

The value and originality of this article is twofold: the disproving, through fact collection and systematic analysis, of current misconceptions about the properties of the blockchain and DLSs, and the discussion of challenges to achieving adequate trustworthiness along with the proposal of general avenues for possible solutions.

The rough set concept is a new mathematical approach to imprecision, vagueness and uncertainty. This paper introduces the emergent computational paradigm and discusses its applicability and potential in rough set theory.

A conceptual discussion and approach are taken.

For accepting a system is displaying an emergent behavior, the system should be constructed by describing local elementary interactions between components in different ways of describing global behavior and properties of the running system over a period of time. The proposals of an emergent computation structure for implementing basic rough sets theory operators are also given in this paper.

The results will have an important impact on the development of new methods for knowledge discovery in databases, in particular for development of algorithmic methods for pattern extraction from data.

This paper aims to respond to Budd's discussion of meaning, truth and information by exploring the ontological framework prescribed by critical realism. Budd's thesis that information must be defined within the context of meaning and truth is challenged and the ontological priority of information is argued.

Following a critique of Budd's conclusions, a “regional ontology” of information is discussed. The practical adequacy of this theory is demonstrated by applying it to information‐seeking and meaning‐making, as described by Dervin's Sense‐Making Methodology (SMM). Finally, a case study is provided to illustrate the re‐conceptualization and implications in future research applications.

Information is a “thing” of ontological significance and which possesses truth and meaning as properties. Information may present as uninforming, incomprehensible, deceptive, nonsensical or sensical, depending on how the properties truth and meaning are expressed.

The main implication arising from this paper is that a definition of information is provided which permits application to situations of conflict or dissonance concerning information use. Abductive reasoning facilitates application of SMM to historically produced documents.

The novelty of this paper lies in the analysis of information, truth and meaning according to a realist, emergentist ontology, and in the consequent application of Dervin's SMM to documents by abductive reasoning.

An essential requirement for tourism planning and policymaking is to review past strategies. The development of future roadmaps depends on a robust strategy validation process. The research analyses the technology strategies in Goa from 1962–2017 and highlights the impact of technology on tourism in Goa.

The paper presents a unique methodology that integrates tourism area life cycle (TALC) and Mintzberg’s strategy analysis framework to evaluate strategies at a tourism destination.

The findings show that most technological advancements have taken place during the period 1989–2008. Both deliberate and emergent strategies were identified. Development of technology altered the type of tourism practiced in Goa. The use of internet facilitated the growth of tourism.

This study clarifies the styles of public planning for tourism. It provides the foundation for strategic planning process.

Effective and efficient use of policy through technology road mapping can aid in co-creating a sustainable tourism destination for the future.

The strategic evaluation framework can be used in any tourism destinations to identify past strategies and assess its impact on the future.

The paper presents a unique methodology that integrates TALC and Mintzberg’s strategy analysis framework to evaluate strategies at a tourism destination. The research proposes a strategic evaluation process that recognizes past strategies to validate the strategic analysis process.

The aim of this paper is to examine empirically the relevance of the theory of deferred action for knowledge management systems (KMS) design in practice.

The study adopts a case study approach to examine knowledge work and knowledge management in virtual teamwork in a large UK telecommunications company to understand the occurrence of emergent knowledge and how it is managed by virtual team leaders. The section in the company studied is described as a “knowledge intensive organization” dealing with the company's e‐commerce activities.

The analysis confirms the complex adaptive system hypothesis – a complex system adapts to its environment through self‐organization. The data reveal the behaviour of the virtual team to be self‐organizing and adaptive to its environment. It confirms the knowledge tacitness hypothesis and social embeddedness of knowledge hypothesis as important determinants of knowledge sharing. Specifically, the data reveal the main issues concerning knowledge sharing practices of virtual team workers and the crucial team leader's role in the effectiveness of the teams' capability to develop social links to externalise and share tacit knowledge to accomplish tasks.

In this paper, the authors contribute “emergent knowledge” as a third category of organizational knowledge in addition to the existing tacit and explicit knowledge that needs to be considered when designing KMS. It also derives socio‐technical systems design principles based on the theory of deferred action, and a tentative development process with metrics is then proposed for KMS design that caters for emergent, tacit, and explicit knowledge.

Existing models such as the SECI model do not acknowledge emergent knowledge or its conversion into explicit knowledge. The theory of deferred action is invoked to derive design principles, termed deferred systems design principles, to depict how explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge, and emergent knowledge can be represented to design knowledge management systems for “emergent organizations”.

The study contributes to the limited research and lack of consideration of emergent knowledge as an integral part of organizational knowledge, especially in an era of emergent organizations.

How a micro-founded discipline such as economics could deal with the increasing global economic reality? This question has been asked frequently since the last economic crisis that appeared in 2008. In this challenging context, some commentators have turned their attention to a new area of knowledge coming from physics: econophysics which mainly focuses on a macro-analysis of economic systems. By showing that concepts used by econophysicists are consistent with an existing economic knowledge (developed by J.S. Mill), the purpose of this paper is to claim that an interdisciplinary perspective is possible between these two communities.

The authors propose a historical and conceptual analysis of the key concept of emergence to emphasize the potential bridge between econophysics and economics.

Six methodological arguments will be developed in order to show the existence of conceptual bridges as a necessary condition for the elaboration of a common language between economists and econophysics which would not be superfluous, in this challenging context, to clarify the growing complexity of economic phenomena.

Although the economics and econophysics study same the complex economic phenomena, very few collaborations exist between them. This paper paves a conceptual/methodological path for more collaboration between the two fields.

The purpose of this research is to make evident the inadequateness of concepts and language based on industrial knowledge still used in current practices by managers to cope with problems of the post‐industrial societies characterised by non‐linear process of emergence and acquisition of properties. The purpose is to allow management to use language and concepts more appropriate to deal with complexity, i.e. to represent, induce and orient processes of chance, and second, to outline a theory of practice guiding their efforts. The purpose is also to underline the urgency of a new general management education.

The methodology is based on contrasting concepts and their linguistic representations of the industrial age to the related post‐industrial ones. The approach is based on representing processes by using a more appropriate language, cultural aspect of science of complexity, able to deal with processes of emergence.

Suitable, appropriate and open linguistic representations allow effective management of complex social systems where processes of emergence, i.e. acquisition of properties, occur. Current educational process for managers should be rethought. Learning relates to design new suitable models.

One limit of this approach is given by the fact that it is not easy to implement, it cannot be considered a tool and imbalances are inevitable due to differences and inhomogeneous assumption of this new thinking.

It is a potential guide in helping practitioners in recognizing, inducing and managing complexity of processes and change.

The paper presents a new way to recognise and see reciprocal‐relational forces within a cultural‐social‐political context by using suitable translations of concepts and approaches introduced in science of complexity, such as in physics, mathematics, biology, and chemistry.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) typically accelerate target top management team (TMT) executive departures. Market discipline and Relative Standing are two major and competing economic and sociological explanations for this phenomenon which lack a satisfactory theoretical integration. To fill this gap in the literature, we model the M&A market as a complex adaptive system composed of TMTs which rid themselves of executives via self-organized critical processes, generating M&A market-level properties that are emergent, or not easily explained with reference to the individual TMTs. The observation of an emergent power law distribution in target TMT executive retention rates for M&A activities in the United States supports our interpretation.

The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of designing artificial complex adaptive systems, like information systems and organisations, by developing a proof‐of‐concept conceptual proto‐agent model.

The paper develops an exploratory proto‐agent model and evaluates its suitability for implementation as agent‐based simulation.

The paper focuses on understanding the effect of emergence when designing artificial complex adaptive systems and produces a proto‐agent model that identified agents and their behavioural rules for modelling.

In deferred action, agents act in emergent organisation to achieve predetermined goals. Since emergence cannot be predicted, information systems and organisation design approaches that cater for emergent organisation are required.

The deferred action construct is a synthesis of planned approaches and contingency approaches to design information systems. It recognises the effect of emergence on information systems.