Intelligent Agents for Disaster Management

ALADDIN [1] is a multi-disciplinary project that is developing novel techniques, architectures, and mechanisms for multi-agent systems in uncertain and dynamic environments. The application focus of the project is disaster management. Research within a number of themes is being pursued and this is considering different aspects of the interaction between autonomous agents and the decentralised system architectures that support those interactions. The aim of the research is to contribute to building more robust multi-agent systems for future applications in disaster management and other similar domains

Enabling flexibility through strategic management of complex engineering systems

”Flexibility is a highly desired attribute of many systems operating in changing or uncertain conditions. It is a common theme in complex systems to identify where flexibility is generated within a system and how to model the processes needed to maintain and sustain flexibility. The key research question that is addressed is: how do we create a new definition of workforce flexibility within a human-technology-artificial intelligence environment? Workforce flexibility is the management of organizational labor capacities and capabilities in operational environments using a broad and diffuse set of tools and approaches to mitigate system imbalances caused by uncertainties or changes. We establish a baseline reference for managers to use in choosing flexibility methods for specific applications and we determine the scope and effectiveness of these traditional flexibility methods. The unique contributions of this research are: a) a new definition of workforce flexibility for a human-technology work environment versus traditional definitions; b) using a system of systems (SoS) approach to create and sustain that flexibility; and c) applying a coordinating strategy for optimal workforce flexibility within the human- technology framework. This dissertation research fills the gap of how we can model flexibility using SoS engineering to show where flexibility emerges and what strategies a manager can use to manage flexibility within this technology construct”--Abstract, page iii

A feature-based comparison of the centralised versus market-based decision making under lens of environment uncertainty: Case of the mobile task allocation problem

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Decision making problems are amongst the most common challenges facing managers at different management levels in the organisation: strategic, tactical, and operational. However, prior reaching decisions at the operational level of the management hierarchy, operations management departments frequently have to deal with the optimisation process to evaluate the available decision alternatives. Industries with complex supply chain structures and service organisations that have to optimise the utilisation of their resources are examples. Conventionally, operational decisions used to be taken centrally by a decision making authority located at the top of a hierarchically-structured organisation. In order to take decisions, information related to the managed system and the affecting externalities (e.g. demand) should be globally available to the decision maker. The obtained information is then processed to reach the optimal decision. This approach usually makes extensive use of information systems (IS) containing myriad of optimisation algorithms and meta-heuristics to process the high amount and complex nature of data. The decisions reached are then broadcasted to the passive actuators of the system to put them in execution. On the other hand, recent advancements in information and communication technologies (ICT) made it possible to distribute the decision making rights and proved its applicability in several sectors. The market-based approach is as such a distributed decision making mechanism where passive actuators are delegated the rights of taking individual decisions matching their self-interests. The communication among the market agents is done through market transactions regulated by auctions. The system’s global optimisation, therefore, raise from the aggregated self-oriented market agents. As opposed to the centralised approach, the main characteristics of the market-based approach are the market mechanism and local knowledge of the agents. The existence of both approaches attracted several studies to compare them in different contexts. Recently, some comparisons compared the centralised versus market-based approaches in the context of transportation applications from an algorithm perspective. Transportation applications and routing problems are assumed to be good candidates for this comparison given the distributed nature of the system and due to the presence of several sources of uncertainty. Uncertainty exceptions make decisions highly vulnerable and necessitating frequent corrective interventions to keep an efficient level of service. Motivated by the previous comparison studies, this research aims at further investigating the features of both approaches and to contrast them in the context of a distributed task allocation problem in light of environmental uncertainty. Similar applications are often faced by service industries with mobile workforce. Contrary to the previous comparison studies that sought to compare those approaches at the mechanism level, this research attempts to identify the effect of the most significant characteristics of each approach to face environmental uncertainty, which is reflected in this research by the arrival of dynamic tasks and the occurrence of stochasticity delays. To achieve the aim of this research, a target optimisation problem from the VRP family is proposed and solved with both approaches. Given that this research does not target proposing new algorithms, two basic solution mechanisms are adopted to compare the centralised and the market-based approach. The produced solutions are executed on a dedicated multi-agent simulation system. During execution dynamism and stochasticity are introduced. The research findings suggest that a market-based approach is attractive to implement in highly uncertain environments when the degree of local knowledge and workers’ experience is high and when the system tends to be complex with large dimensions. It is also suggested that a centralised approach fits more in situations where uncertainty is lower and the decision maker is able to make timely decision updates, which is in turn regulated by the size of the system at hand

Enterprise information technology organizational flexibility : managing uncertainty and change

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) lead enterprise information technology organizations (EITOs) in today\u27s dynamic competitive business environment. CIOs deal with external and internal environmental changes, changing internal customer needs, and rapidly changing technology. New models for the organization include flexibility and suggest that CIOs should create and manage an enterprise IT organization that is more flexible in order to manage change and prepare for uncertainty, but they do not define what is meant by flexibility. The first objective of this exploratory and ethnographic research study was to understand how uncertainty and unexpected change are currently managed by CIOs. The second was to develop a systematic definition of enterprise IT organizational flexibility, The third was to explore the potential value of a proposed \u27enterprise IT organizational flexibility framework\u27 to be used by CIOs to better manage uncertainty and unexpected change. Rich research data was collected in an exploratory ethnographic study from in-depth interviews with twenty CIOs. These participants included a diverse representation from large to small enterprises, different industries, and with a variety of IT education and functional enterprise experiences. The conclusions from this study included a clearer understanding of the CIO\u27s leadership role when managing uncertainty and unexpected change, a definition of enterprise IT organizational flexibility with three aspects: anticipation, agility, and adaptability, and a framework for enterprise IT organizational flexibility assessment and development

Towards A New Understanding of Managerial Competencies: In-depth Study of SME Internationalisation

Due to the increasing involvement of enterprises in international markets, the strategic management of the transition of an organisation from purely domestic into a multinational organisation has become increasingly important. The literature shows that a significant number of the organisation that choose to internationalise are SMEs which command little resources to enable this transition. Increased diversity, ambiguity and complexity as well as uncertainty, instability and high levels of competition are considered to be the characteristics of the context of SME internationalisation and the root cause of some of the challenges that SME managers face. This thesis focuses on the ever-growing emphasis on the management of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) specifically by exploring the managerial competencies required for SME internationalisation. It aims to identify the managerial competencies required for SME internationalisation. This qualitative study is informed by the grounded theory methodology. Using semi-structured interviews, primary data was collected from interviewing 52 SME managers who were directly involved in the internationalisation of their respective SME. In contrast to existing thinking in strategic management, which outlines a set of competencies (a functionalist perspective) which can be dynamically arranged (dynamic capabilities/entrepreneurship perspective), this study highlights that managerial competency is a unique, individual and dynamic experience. The study highlights that, in practice, SMEs do not engage in a great deal of systematic strategic planning and their managers have significantly different experiences of the SME internationalisation process. This becomes evident in how they perceived themselves and their different individual experiences during the internationalisation of their SMEs. Additionally, the findings indicate that managerial competency may involve an interaction and interrelation with information and the dynamic arrangement of functional competencies, but the focus of academics and practitioners needs to shift to understanding internationalisation as an experience. This thesis investigates the importance of agency and structure and how competency is a negotiation with the environment that is driven by the SME agent (i.e., the manager) via the managerial experience of SME internationalisation. The implication of the thesis is that there is a need for a paradigm shift in existing thinking from theorising managerial competencies required for SME internationalisation (functionalist perspective) to theorising individual managerial experiences of SME internationalisation i.e., agential experience (agency theory perspective). These are experiences which support SME managers in managing their organisations throughout the transitional period and when their organisation has been fully internationalised and is competing in the diverse international environment. Thus, the study highlights that the ontology of SME managerial competency is not understood in full currently. It identifies the paradigm shift that is needed and has developed the theoretical understanding of managerial competencies as an agential experience. The empirical approach reflects future research

A resource-advantage perspective on the orchestration of ambidexterity

Strategic resources are key inputs to strategy that can form the basis of superior service performance, yet there is scarce research on the strategic resources used by managers to realise ambidexterity: the simultaneous pursuit of alignment and adaptability. In this article, we draw on a qualitative case study of a leading European airline and examine the resource bundles used by managers in their orchestration of ambidexterity. Adopting a resource-advantage perspective, the study illustrates elements of human, organisational, and informational capital that are mobilised by managers in their incorporation of alignment-oriented and adaptability-oriented activities. By moving beyond a linear association between strategic resources and ambidextrous organisations, we argue that managers' orchestration of ambidexterity is central to how service organisations manage their strategic resources and enhance competitiveness. Overall, we highlight the micro managerial level as an important point of observation to extend current thinking on the ‘how’ of ambidexterity in service organisations