Self-organising agent communities for autonomic resource management

The autonomic computing paradigm addresses the operational challenges presented by increasingly complex software systems by proposing that they be composed of many autonomous components, each responsible for the run-time reconfiguration of its own dedicated hardware and software components. Consequently, regulation of the whole software system becomes an emergent property of local adaptation and learning carried out by these autonomous system elements. Designing appropriate local adaptation policies for the components of such systems remains a major challenge. This is particularly true where the system’s scale and dynamism compromise the efficiency of a central executive and/or prevent components from pooling information to achieve a shared, accurate evidence base for their negotiations and decisions.In this paper, we investigate how a self-regulatory system response may arise spontaneously from local interactions between autonomic system elements tasked with adaptively consuming/providing computational resources or services when the demand for such resources is continually changing. We demonstrate that system performance is not maximised when all system components are able to freely share information with one another. Rather, maximum efficiency is achieved when individual components have only limited knowledge of their peers. Under these conditions, the system self-organises into appropriate community structures. By maintaining information flow at the level of communities, the system is able to remain stable enough to efficiently satisfy service demand in resource-limited environments, and thus minimise any unnecessary reconfiguration whilst remaining sufficiently adaptive to be able to reconfigure when service demand changes

Distributed cognition and computer supported collaborative design: The organisation of work in construction engineering

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The intellectual contribution of this thesis lies within the area of computer supported co-operative work (CSCW), and more specifically, computer supported co-operative design (CSCD). CSCW is concerned with the development of information systems and technological support for multi-participant work activities. Research into CSCW seeks to understand how people and organisations interact with one another, and to integrate this understanding with the development of computer based tools to support real world settings. Much of the technology developed to support the work of designers has been developed to aid individuals working alone, with tools like computer aided drafting (CAD), scheduling, and database software. The growth of interest in ‘groupware’ has led many technology developers to adapt these design tools for use in group situations. However, joint activities are different from those performed alone, and organisational structures can both interfere with, and supplement co-operative work practices in a way that the current technologies cannot provide support for. To develop effective group design tools, we need to understand more about collaborative processes in design. This thesis draws from the theoretical underpinning of cognitive science and the methods of anthropology and sociology, in an interdisciplinary study of design performance in the construction industry. Fieldwork is used as a method of qualitative data collection and this is examined within the analytic framework of distributed cognition. The results of this analysis provide a useful and usable description of the work of design that technology developers can use to support collaborative design work. In line with the methods of distributed cognition, the activities observed in the workplace studies are examined in terms of their processes and representations. The resources that were available to the design participants are made explicit, as are their situation-specific work patterns. Two case studies of design are examined. The first of these describes design work in a civil engineering project, which involves a number of different design activities. The second describes the work of consulting engineers in building design, focusing on a more limited design role, which is used to back up and supplement areas of the first study that were understood to be particularly relevant. The findings of the study demonstrate how design processes operate simultaneously at personal, organisational and inter-organisational levels. The distinction between the formal, organisational procedures, and the informal, social processes that compliment them is examined to show how these are interrelated in the performance of the design task and their importance to the mechanisms used to co-ordinate actions. The findings of the study have implications for the development of novel technologies to augment the engineering design process, and have already been used in the development of assistive design technologies. The thesis demonstrates that the framework of distributed cognition can be used in the analysis of cognition within a setting, involving multiple individuals, in concert with 'natural' and 'artificial' artefacts. The thesis makes clear a number of processes in design that can only be examined from a perspective which includes the social dimensions of work. The methods of study focus on the resources in collaborative activities, whilst the analysis, structured in terms of the representations and processes of collaborative activity, shows that the method can be used effectively in the development of CSCW and CSCD technologies

Rethinking the patient: using Burden of Treatment Theory to understand the changing dynamics of illness

<b>Background</b> In this article we outline Burden of Treatment Theory, a new model of the relationship between sick people, their social networks, and healthcare services. Health services face the challenge of growing populations with long-term and life-limiting conditions, they have responded to this by delegating to sick people and their networks routine work aimed at managing symptoms, and at retarding - and sometimes preventing - disease progression. This is the new proactive work of patient-hood for which patients are increasingly accountable: founded on ideas about self-care, self-empowerment, and self-actualization, and on new technologies and treatment modalities which can be shifted from the clinic into the community. These place new demands on sick people, which they may experience as burdens of treatment.<p></p> <b>Discussion</b> As the burdens accumulate some patients are overwhelmed, and the consequences are likely to be poor healthcare outcomes for individual patients, increasing strain on caregivers, and rising demand and costs of healthcare services. In the face of these challenges we need to better understand the resources that patients draw upon as they respond to the demands of both burdens of illness and burdens of treatment, and the ways that resources interact with healthcare utilization.<p></p> <b>Summary</b> Burden of Treatment Theory is oriented to understanding how capacity for action interacts with the work that stems from healthcare. Burden of Treatment Theory is a structural model that focuses on the work that patients and their networks do. It thus helps us understand variations in healthcare utilization and adherence in different healthcare settings and clinical contexts

Understanding Management Accounting Changes in a Family-Owned Company: A Greek Case Study

This study seeks to understand the changes to management accounting controls in a large Greek company in the context of the rapidly changing socio-economic environment. The paper investigates the case of FA (here anonymised), a Greek dairy company, as it has been transformed from a small family-run firm to one of the biggest companies in Greece. Familial and informal management controls have been transformed into a relatively formal and professional form of control over the years. The dynamics and nature of management accounting changes are understood by drawing on critical realism, a theoretical framework pioneered by Roy Bhaskar (1975, 1979). Our analysis revealed that a changed wider structural environment, changed control needs of owners and ?politics of control within capital? between competing management positions (Armstrong, 1989) precipitated the changes in the management control practices of the organization

Economic Performance, Inter-Firm Relations and Local Institutional Engineering in a Computational Prototype of Industrial Districts

Industrial districts can be conceived as complex systems characterised by a network of interactions amongst heterogeneous, localised, functionally, integrated and complementary firms. In a previous paper, we have introduced an industrial district computational prototype, showing that the economic performance of an industrial district proceeds to the form through which firms interact and co-ordinate each others. In this paper, we use such computational framework to experiment different options of local institutional engineering', trying to understand how specific supporting institutions' could perform macro-collective activities, such as, i.e., technology research, transfer and information, improving the technological adaptation of firms. Is a district more than a simple aggregation of localised firms? What can explain the economic performance of firms localised into the same space? Could some options of 'local institutional engineering, improve the performance of a district? Could such options set aside the problem of how firms dynamically interact? These are questions explored in this paper

Complex systems leadership in emergent community projects

The literature on community development rarely addresses the issue of emergent leadership. Community development is a non-linear process which may arise from the initiatives of people within the community, utilizing their social capital with relatively few economic or human capital resources. Yet to answer the question of how the community is mobilized for development, the issue of leadership must be addressed. An individual or a group must mobilize the community for this purpose. As Barker et al. (in Leadership and Social Movements, Manchester Unity Press, Manchester, 2001) argue, leadership is an essential element of change. In this paper, we explore the issue of emergent leadership in five community case studies. The theoretical lens of complexity theory is used to analyse the ways in which leadership emerges. Seven themes emerged, some of which were consistent with complexity theory. © Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal. 2010 All rights reserved

Re-structuring competetive metropolitan regions: on territory, institutions and governance. RheinRuhr compared with London, Paris and the Randstad Holland

Currently social and political constructed urban regions are about to approach a threefold role regarding their functional, economic and political function. At first they constitute a basis for economic and social life. What is next is their role as a vital relational asset to refine competitive advantages and thirdly they exemplify the significance of a new era of reflexive capitalism. One underlying consequence of the "new" interest concerning the de- and re-territorialisation of political economic activity is to consider the regional scale as a functional space for economic planning and political governance. Our intended contribution for the ERSA-Conference deals with the role of selected European Metropolitan Regions as "driving forces" for national and Europe`s competitiveness and the involved challenges for such urban regions to pool their resources and potentials in order to cerate some kind of "appropriate organising capacities". To do so, the authors would draw on the ongoing debate about the adequate analysis of regional political economies and on the empirical results produced within two recently finished international research projects (named as EURBANET and GEMACA II: both were executed under the umbrella of the INTERREG IIC operational programme for the North Western Metropolitan Area). Whilst GEMACA II focussed on the competitiveness of metropolitan regions, the EURBANET project took on board the possible contribution of polynuclear urban regions, such as RheinRuhr and the Delta Metropolis, in order to strengthen the regional competitiveness and quality of life. Additionally, their potential roles in transnational planning processes were under study. The planned paper would start with the observation that a great number of examinations on urban or city-regional economies reduce these "spatialities" to empirical given administrative bounded cities and simultaneously to a "container" for socio-economic processes. However, a "region" is comprehended as a historical contingent process and its emergence needs to be understood as a part of socio-spatial structure and collective consciousness of society. Questions of spatial scales, territorial shapes, institutional formations and cultural identities are thus given preference by a number of social scientists and human geographers. In order to respond to this perspective, the authors want to discuss three key factors of the economic development exemplified by four metropolitan regions (as named in the headline). 1. the territorial shape of comparable functional urban regions including the specific questions of the internal spatial shape (rather monocentric or polycentric configurations without a dominant core); 2. the present "economic performance" of the selected regions embedded in the discourse of "regional competitiveness"; 3. the importance of "appropriate" institutional and policy-making frameworks for effective metropolitan governance and governments by bringing together the mutual interests of various city-regional stakeholders.