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Article
Publication date: 13 February 2023

Kai Liu, Yuming Liu, Yuanyuan Kou and Xiaoxu Yang

The mega railway infrastructure projects are faced with complex environments and multi-level management challenges. Thus, the mega railway infrastructure project management system…

Abstract

Purpose

The mega railway infrastructure projects are faced with complex environments and multi-level management challenges. Thus, the mega railway infrastructure project management system not only needs to focus on its composition, but also needs to consider changes and impacts of internal and external environment.

Design/methodology/approach

This study attempts to introduce the concept of dissipative structure from the perspective of complexity theory and constructs a positive entropy and negentropy flow index system for mega railway infrastructure project management system in order to analyze the factors of management system more deeply. The Brusselator model is used to construct the structure of the mega railway infrastructure project management system, and the entropy method is used to calculate the positive entropy and negentropy values to verify whether the management system is a dissipative structure.

Findings

A plateau railway project in China was used as an example for an empirical study, not only its own characteristics are analyzed, but also the role of constraints and facilitation of the internal and external environment. Based on the research results, several effective suggestions are put forward to improve the stability and work efficiency of mega railway infrastructure project management system.

Originality/value

This study demonstrates that mega railway infrastructure project management system has the characteristics of dissipative structure. It can provide theoretical support for the development of mega railway infrastructure project management system from disorderly state to orderly state.

Details

Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management, vol. ahead-of-print no. ahead-of-print
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0969-9988

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 December 1994

Alexis V. Jdanko

Investigates the enigmatic phenomenon of information from the two major perspectives of modern cybernetics: the negentropic and the evolutionary. Discusses the meaning of this…

152

Abstract

Investigates the enigmatic phenomenon of information from the two major perspectives of modern cybernetics: the negentropic and the evolutionary. Discusses the meaning of this phenomenon, considering it, ultimately, as the means of combating entropy within cybernetic or control systems which create or receive, process, stock, and use information, eventually with the purpose of regulating their matter‐energy fluxes necessary for struggling against inner entropy. Discusses the sense of information as relating to thermodynamical entropy in a philosophical manner and not in some formal (mathematical) language.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 23 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1997

Janusz Brozyna

Presents an example of the analysis of civilizing processes with the method of exact sciences to determine what the absolute limit of human civilization development is and what it…

209

Abstract

Presents an example of the analysis of civilizing processes with the method of exact sciences to determine what the absolute limit of human civilization development is and what it depends on. Gives some practical instances such as the political and social interpretation of the mathematical results arising from this new kind of analysis.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 26 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 December 1995

Guy Jumarie

Organizing systems should have a decreasing informational entropy, and a meaningful modelling of this property is provided by the approach via the maximum entropy principle, in…

169

Abstract

Organizing systems should have a decreasing informational entropy, and a meaningful modelling of this property is provided by the approach via the maximum entropy principle, in which the value of the entropy so achieved decreases as the number of constraints increases. As a result, self‐organizing systems could be characterized by a property of self‐creation of constraints. The approach can be extended to probability distributions which depend on an external distributed parameter. In this same information theoretic framework, it appears that the concept of negentropy (negative entropy) introduced by physicists a few decades ago, can be directly identified with informational entropy of deterministic functions (which can be thought of as related to entropy of forms).

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 24 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 April 1993

Guy Jumarie

The complexity of a general system is identified with its temperature and, analogously with Boltzmann's probability density in thermodynamics, this temperature is related to the…

Abstract

The complexity of a general system is identified with its temperature and, analogously with Boltzmann's probability density in thermodynamics, this temperature is related to the informational entropy of the system. The concept of informational entropy of deterministic functions provides a straightforward modelling of Brillouin's negentropy (negative entropy), therefore a system can be characterized by its complexity and its dual complexity. States composition laws for complexities expressed in terms of Shannonian entropy with or without probability, and then the approach is extended to quantum entropy of non‐probabilistic data. Outlines some suggestions for future investigation.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 22 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 June 1994

P.R. Masani

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry…

Abstract

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 23 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 January 1982

GER LOU

Uncertainty as a whole in our knowledge about reality is stressed. Redundancy as the factor to counterbalance the impact of uncertainty as a whole, is discussed and recognized in…

Abstract

Uncertainty as a whole in our knowledge about reality is stressed. Redundancy as the factor to counterbalance the impact of uncertainty as a whole, is discussed and recognized in the real world. The interpretation of the quantum mechanical wave function in connection with uncertainty as a whole is put forward. The third law of thermodynamics and the principles of quantum mechanics are found to be at one, embodying the principle of the relativity of truth. Information feedback and negentropy for generating order are related, and the algorithmic approach to the definition of information contained in individual objects is mentioned.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 11 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Article
Publication date: 20 February 2007

Vladimir S. Lerner

Science of systems requires a specific and constructive mathematical model and language, which describe jointly such systemic categories as adaptation, self‐organization…

1184

Abstract

Purpose

Science of systems requires a specific and constructive mathematical model and language, which describe jointly such systemic categories as adaptation, self‐organization, complexity, evolution, and bring the applied tools for building a system model for each specific object of a diverse nature. This formalism should be connected directly with a world of information and computer applications of systemic model, developed for a particular object. The considered information systems theory (IST) is aimed at building a bridge between the mathematical systemic formalism and information technologies to develop a constructive systemic model of revealing information regularities and specific information code for each object.

Design/methodology/approach

To fulfill this goal and the considered systems' definition, the IST joins two main concepts: unified information description of interacted flows, initiated by the sources of different nature, with common information language and systems modeling methodology, applied to distinct interdisciplinary objects; general system's information formalism for building the model, which allows expressing mathematically the system's regularities and main systemic mechanisms.

Findings

The formalism of informational macrodynamics (IMD), based of the minimax variational principle, reveals the system model's main layers: microlevel stochastics, macrolevel dynamics, hierarchical dynamic network (IN) of information structures, its minimal logic, and optimal code of communication language, generated by the IN hierarchy, dynamics, and geometry. The system's complex dynamics originate information geometry and evolution with the functional information mechanisms of ordering, cooperation, mutation, stability, diversity, adaptation, self‐organization, and the double helix's genetic code.

Practical implications

The developed IMD's theoretical computer‐based methodology and the software has been applied to such areas as technology, communications, computer science, intelligent processes, biology, economy, management, and other nonphysical and physical subjects.

Originality/value

The IMD's macrodynamics of uncertainties connect randomness and regularities, stochastic and determinism, reversibility and irreversibility, symmetry and asymmetry, stability and instability, structurization and stochastization, order and disorder, as a result of micro‐macrolevel's interactions for an open system, when the external environment can change the model's structure.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 36 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1998

Peter Dudley

This paper presents an argument relating to the relative importance of human life on earth. In Popperian fashion, a number of falsifiable conjectures are made and, using systemic…

Abstract

This paper presents an argument relating to the relative importance of human life on earth. In Popperian fashion, a number of falsifiable conjectures are made and, using systemic principles, conclusions are drawn.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 27 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 January 2024

Evy Rahman Utami, Sumiyana Sumiyana, Jogiyanto Hartono Mustakini and Zuni Barokah

The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 16 in developing countries to enhance asset pronouncements or…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 16 in developing countries to enhance asset pronouncements or the quality of opaque accounting information for listed firms’ leasing transactions.

Design/methodology/approach

This study designed ordinary least square (OLS) regression models to examine the hypotheses in two ordered tests. The first-order test ascertained the association between fundamental accounting information and earnings or stock prices. Then, the second-order test was nested to add the instrument variable to the first-order one. In addition, the researchers selected 17 Asia-Pacific countries.

Findings

First, this study contributes to the fair value of firms’ asset measurements, and the accounting discipline requires adaptive scalability to produce future potential cash flows. Second, it reduces literature gaps between the pros and cons of the opaqueness of assets. In addition, these research arguments would be the referee for reducing information’s opacity. Finally, this study demonstrates the impact of IFRS 16’s implementation on firms’ conservatism levels and entropy’s information quality, requiring the regulators to accommodate these issues.

Originality/value

Due to the implementation of IFRS 16, the authors are neutral about the impacted financial statements and political consequences for these Asia-Pacific listed firms and countries. First, we propose the uniqueness of problematic elaboration since implementing IFRS 16 results in a more pronounced or opaque information quality due to vulnerable complexities in the financial statements. Second, this implementation is associated with hierarchical information and conservatism, producing accounting information entropy or negentropy. However, the hierarchy theory suggests various levels of conservatism that could increase or decrease the information’s quality.

Details

Accounting Research Journal, vol. 37 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1030-9616

Keywords

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