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There is a dearth of research addressing network failures, and in particular failures of large-scale organizational networks that pursue radical innovation or grand challenges through collaboration. Yet these failures manifestly exist with potential learnings for network participants. In this chapter, the authors consider three major network failures that have been identified in prior research and in the ongoing empirical work. The authors term the failures stalling – not getting started in collaborative work, strategizing – using the network opportunistically to serve other goals than what the network was formed for, and siloing – the network falling short of its collective capacity to learn and innovate due to its lack of connectivity and communication. After describing these three seminal failures in networks of independent organizations, the authors consider the implications for high ambition network collaboration – whether radical innovation or a grand challenge. The authors ask: what do these failures suggest in terms of network participation that would help contribute to network realizing its objective? How should the individual participants of these large-scale organizational networks mitigate failure and maintain the founding ambition, and the performance of the network? What available models for learning are there for the network participants?

The behavior of the entities in a small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) cooperation network is influenced by the core enterprise. Addressing the problem of how the network vulnerability changes when the core enterprise is attacked is a challenging topic. The purpose of this paper is to reveal the failure process of SME cooperation networks caused by the failure of the core SME from the perspective of cascading failure.

According to the Torch High Technology Industry Development Center, Ministry of Science & Technology in China, 296 SMEs in Jiangsu province were used to construct an SME cooperation network of technology-based SMEs and an under-loading cascading failure model. The weight-based attack strategy was selected to mimic a deliberate node attack and was used to analyze the vulnerability of the SME cooperation network.

Some important conclusions are obtained from the simulation analysis: (1) The minimum boundary of node enterprises has a negative relationship with networks' invulnerability, while the breakdown probability has an inverted-U relationship with networks' invulnerability. (2) The combined effect of minimum boundary and breakdown probability indicates that the vulnerability of networks is mainly determined by the breakdown probability; while, minimum boundary helps prevent cascading failure occur. Furthermore, according to the case study, adapting capital needs and resilience in the cooperation network is the core problem in improving the robustness of SME cooperation networks.

This research proposed an under-loading cascading failure model to investigate the under-loading failure process caused by the shortage of resources when the core enterprise fails or withdraws from the SME cooperation network. Two key parameters in the proposed model—minimum capacity and breakdown probability—could serve as a guide for research on the vulnerability of SME cooperation networks. Additionally, practical meanings for each parameter in the proposed model are given, to suggest novel insights regarding network protection to facilitate the robustness and vulnerability in real SME cooperation networks.

Mobile ad‐hoc networks (MANET) are networks that are formed in an ad‐hoc manner by collections of devices that are equipped with wireless communication capabilities, such as the popular WiFi (IEEE 802.11b) standard. As the hardware technology and networking protocols for MANETs become mature and ubiquitous, the main barrier for MANETs to become widely used is applications. Like in other areas of distributed computing, in order to expedite the development of applications, there is a need for middleware services that support these applications. Failure detection has been identified as a basic component for many reliable distributed middleware services and applications. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

This paper presents an adaptation of a gossip‐based failure detection protocol to MANETs, and an evaluation by extensive simulations of this protocol's performance in such networks.

The results can be viewed as a feasibility check for implementing failure detection in MANETs, and the conclusions drawn from them can be used to motivate and improve future implementations of both a failure detection component and of applications and middleware services relying on such a component.

This paper presents an adaptation of a gossip‐based failure detection protocol to MANET environments, and presents an extensive simulation‐based performance study of this protocol in MANETs with various parameters.

Studies on organizational failure learning have focused on whether and how organizations learn from failures but have paid limited attention on the persistence of failure learning. This study centers on failure recidivism and answers why organizations would fall into repeated failures after learning from them.

Based on a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms that once recovered from special treatment status, the authors use event history technique and Cox proportional hazards regression model.

The authors find that reviviscent firms with higher interlock centrality are less likely to decline again, and underperforming partners can strengthen the role of interlock tie in failure recidivism. By contrast, politically connected reviviscent firms are more likely to decline again, and this effect attenuates for firms located in more market-oriented regions.

The authors’ contribution comes from the close integration of literature on failure learning and network embeddedness perspective to examine how social networks affect the learning process of failure recidivism.

The study provides important practical implications for organizations, especially those that once experienced failures or are experiencing failures.

Combining organizational learning theory and network embeddedness perspective, the study provides novel insights into answering how firms embedded in different types of social networks affect failure learning persistence differently.

The construction industry is an industry with a high incidence of safety accidents, and the interactions of unsafe behaviors of construction workers are the main cause of accidents. The neglect of the interactions may lead to serious underestimation of safety risks. This research aims to analyze the cascading vulnerability of unsafe behaviors of construction workers from the perspective of network modeling.

An unsafe behavior network of construction workers and a cascading vulnerability analysis model were established based on 296 actual accident cases. The cascading vulnerability of each unsafe behavior was analyzed based on the degree attack strategy.

Complex network with 85 unsafe behavior nodes is established based on the collected accidents in total. The results showed that storing in improper location, does not wear a safety helmet, working with illness and working after drinking are unsafe behaviors with high cascading vulnerability. Coupling analysis revealed that differentiated management strategies of unsafe behaviors should be applied. Besides, more focus should be put on high cascading vulnerability behaviors.

This research proposed a method to construct the cascading failure model of unsafe behavior for individual construction workers. The key parameters of the cascading failure model of unsafe behaviors of construction workers were determined, which could provide a reference for the research of cascading failure of unsafe behaviors. Additionally, a dynamic vulnerability research framework based on complex network theory was proposed to analyze the cascading vulnerability of unsafe behaviors. The research synthesized the results of dynamic and static analysis and found the key control nodes to systematically control unsafe construction behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to examine network failures and the main reasons why network organizations, intentionally developed by a group of actors to pursue specific goals, become unfruitful and fail in their goals and expectations of creating collective value. The goal of this paper is thus to contribute a better understanding of the reasons network organizations encounter problems in their dynamics that prevent them from reaching the expected outcomes.

The study is firstly based on a literature review finalized to identify the main variables considered as potentially impacting on network failures. Secondly, the paper is based on a survey conducted on 189 strategic networks that highlighted difficulties in achieving their goals. An analysis of the 24 questionnaires returned generated the results discussed. The empirical study concerns strategic networks intentionally created and signed by Italian SMEs according to a specific law designed to promote the development of inter-firm cooperation (“network contracts”).

The results of the research highlight the role of specific key items related to individual, structural, legitimacy, interaction and governance variables in explaining failures in network organizations. According to the data, failure can occur immediately before the network start-up, resulting in a blocked network or in a subsequent developmental stage, resulting in a dormant network. The empirical research demonstrated that the items affecting network failure differ between blocked and dormant networks. The authors explain such differences, considering them according to the expected goals declared by the two different types of networks.

The question of why networks fail is relevant in times of disruption and digitalization when new forms of organization are needed to link businesses and various stakeholders and thereby develop innovative and sustainable ideas for an entrepreneurial future. However, very few studies have examined network failure. The study contributes to this field of research by investigating the dynamics of networks intentionally developed to reach shared goals. The findings can be useful to both companies that decide to start up a strategic network and the policymakers that promote, finance and monitor inter-firm collaboration.

The paper takes the air-ground integrated wireless ad hoc network-integrated system as the research object, this paper aims to propose a distributed robust H_∞ adaptive fault-tolerant control algorithm suitable for the system to distribute to solve the problem of control and communication failure at the same time.

In the paper, the authors propose a distributed robust H_∞ adaptive fault-tolerant control algorithm suitable for the air-ground integrated wireless ad hoc network-integrated system.

The results show that the integrated system has good robustness and fault tolerance performance indicators for flight control and wireless signal transmission when confronted with external disturbances, internal actuator failures and wireless network associated failures and the flight control curve of the quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is generally smooth and stable, even if it encounters external disturbances and actuator failures, its fault tolerance performance is very good. Then in the range of 400–800 m wireless communication distance, the success rate of wireless signal loop transmission is stable at 80%–100% and the performance is at least relatively improved by 158.823%.

This paper takes the air-ground integrated wireless ad hoc network-integrated system as the research object, based on the robust fault-tolerant control algorithm, the authors propose a distributed robust H_∞ adaptive fault-tolerant control algorithm suitable for the system and through the Riccati equation and linear matrix inequation method, the designed distributed robust H_∞ adaptive fault-tolerant controller further optimizes the fault suppression factor γ, so as to break through the limitation of only one Lyapunov matrix for different fault modes to distribute to solve the problem of control and communication failure at the same time.

By aiming at defending cascade failures effectively, the purpose of this paper is to present a strategy of inserting modular topologies into urban road network through reducing the burdens of critical components with too much traffic flow.

Each module is considered as a small-world random network, which is inserted into the initial Barabási-Albert scale-free network. Based on the user-equilibrium assignment, the strategy searches for remote nodes with low betweeness and flow in the network, and sets these nodes to be connected with the modular topologies. In this sense, the inserted modules are supposed to attach to the nodes with lower intensity of shorter path, and avoid bringing more impact to the nodes with higher betweeness and traffic flow. By using efficiency as the measurement of cascading failures, the performance of the networks generated through the strategy is tested.

The results show that the performance of the strategy is sensitive to the average degree of the inserted modular, and the modular size with a better effect on reducing the size of cascading failures or delaying the time of breakdown, while the other factors (e.g. the rewired probability) present few differences among various values. Meanwhile, it is found that the importance-based attachment mechanism has a better effect on preventing the cascading failures, especially delaying the step time of the larger reduction.

The strategy aims at alleviating the burdens in critical components to prevent the cascading failures of the network, and provides practical guidance on the decision of the urban road network evolving process.

An effective strategy for cascade defense in urban road network is proposed in this paper.

This paper aims to present a novel approach for assessing the resilience of transportation road infrastructure against different failure scenarios based on the topological properties of the network. The approach is implemented in the context of developing countries where data scarcity is the norm, taking the capital city of Beirut as a case study.

The approach is based on the graph theory concepts and uses spatial data and urban network analysis toolbox to estimate the resilience under random and rank-ordering failure scenarios. The quantitative approach is applied to statistically model the topological graph properties, centralities and appropriate resilience metrics.

The research approach is able to provide a unique insight into the network configuration in terms of resilience against failures. The road network of Beirut, with an average nodal degree of three, turns to act more similarly to a random graph when exposed to failures. Topological parameters, connectivity and density indices of the network decline through disruptions while revealing an entire dependence on the state of nodes. The Beirut random network responds similarly to random and targeted removals. Critical network components are highlighted following the approach.

The approach is limited to an undirected and weighted specific graph of Beirut where the capacity to collect and process the necessary data in such context is limited.

Decision-makers are better able to direct and optimize resources by prioritizing the critical network components, therefore reducing the failure-induced downtime in the functionality.

The resilience of Beirut transportation network is quantified uniquely through graph theory under various node removal modes.

This paper describes and extends the game theoretic approach to network vulnerability assessment. The basic idea is to set up a game between the network users who are trying to minimise their expected travel time by choice of route and a network tester who is trying to penalise the users most by degrading a link through capacity reduction leading to congestion. The method therefore finds the worst possible location for a link degradation, taking re-routing options into account (an upper, lower bound of impact). The original game identifies the weakest link for routes between an OD pair in the network. Two variations are introduced in this paper in order to determine the weak links for a specific origin or a specific destination and for the whole network. All three game variations are tested on a small network in Leicester and the results are presented.