Artificiality in Social Sciences

This text provides with an introduction to the modern approach of artificiality and simulation in social sciences. It presents the relationship between complexity and artificiality, before introducing the field of artificial societies which greatly benefited from the computer power fast increase, gifting social sciences with formalization and experimentation tools previously owned by "hard" sciences alone. It shows that as "a new way of doing social sciences", artificial societies should undoubtedly contribute to a renewed approach in the study of sociality and should play a significant part in the elaboration of original theories of social phenomena.artificial societies; multi-agent systems; distributed artificial intelligence; complexity

Engineering Bureaucracy: The Genesis of Formal Policies, Positions, and Structures in High-Technology Firms

[Excerpt] This article examines the impact of organizational founding conditions on several facets of bureaucratization—managerial intensity, the proliferation of specialized managerial and administrative roles, and formalization of employment relations. Analyzing information on a sample of technology start-ups in California\u27s Silicon Valley, we characterize the organizational models or blueprints espoused by founders in creating new enterprises. We find that those models and the social composition of the labor force at the time of founding had enduring effects on growth in managerial intensity (i.e., reliance on managerial and administrative specialists) over time. Our analyses thus provide compelling evidence of path dependence in the evolution of bureaucracy—even in a context in which firms face intense selection pressures—and underscore the importance of the logics of organizing that founders bring to new enterprises. We find less evidence that founding models exert persistent effects on the formalization of employment relations or on the proliferation of specialized senior management titles. Rather, consistent with neo-institutional perspectives on organizations, those superficial facets of bureaucracy appear to be shaped by the need to satisfy external gatekeepers (venture capitalists and the constituents of public corporations), as well as by exigencies of organizational scale, growth, and aging. We discuss some implications of these results for efforts to understand the varieties, determinants, and consequences of bureaucracy

Designing an information system for updating land records in Bangladesh: action design ethnographic research (ADER)

Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Information Systems (IS) has developed through adapting, generating and applying diverse methodologies, methods, and techniques from reference disciplines. Further, Action Design Research (ADR) has recently developed as a broad research method that focuses on designing and redesigning IT and IS in organizational contexts. This paper reflects on applying ADR in a complex organizational context in a developing country. It shows that ADR requires additional lens for designing IS in such a complex organizational context. Through conducting ADR, it is seen that an ethnographic framework has potential complementarities for understanding complex contexts thereby enhancing the ADR processes. This paper argues that conducting ADR with an ethnographic approach enhances design of IS and organizational contexts. Finally, this paper aims presents a broader methodological framework, Action Design Ethnographic Research (ADER), for designing artefacts as well as IS. This is illustrated through the case of a land records updating service in Bangladesh

Social Balance Theory: Revisiting Heider’s Balance Theory for many agents

We construct a model based on Heider’s social balance theory to analyze the interpersonal network among social agents. The model of social balance theory provides us an interesting tool to see how a social group evolves to the possible balance state. We introduce the balance index that can be used to measure social balance in macro structure level (global balance index) or in micro structure (local balance index) to see how the local balance index influences the global balance structure. Several experiments are done and we discover how the social group can form separation of subgroups in a group or strengthening a social group while emphasizing the structure theorem and social mitosis previously introduced

Formalization of ethics : the issue of standardization

Beyond the presupposed cleavage between economics and ethics, the institutional dimension of economic ethics is to the emphasized. The question is : how can we define collective legal rules which concern the whole society ? The other great issue of ethics formalization is then the implementation on the level of firms. The firm can use a large scope of instruments in order to formalize economic ethics. The asset of ethical standards is that they represent a specific way of coordination. They bring positive effects such as the fall of coordination cost and the reduction of uncertainty. Ethical standards can be regarded as a way to get information. They are also a way to formalize a "common morality", or even an universal morality in a Kantian conception. The central issue, regarding ethical standards, remains its origin and its construction.Economic ethics, ethical standards, industrial economics, industrial policy.

Social Entrepreneurs by Chance: How environmentalists provide a favorable context for social entrepreneurial action.

How, why, and under what conditions can social movements contribute to the development of social entrepreneurial process developed by embedded actors? Social entrepreneurship scholars are increasingly adopting social movement theories to explain how individual entrepreneurs develop their social ventures. Despite the synergies achieved when combining social movement with social entrepreneurship literature, social entrepreneurial outcomes are still mostly explained by the efforts of atomistic actors. In this paper we offer an embedded perspective on social entrepreneurship and social movement, which enables us to examine their complementary features in a sustainable development project in a Dutch region. While contentious activity did not produce the desired effect in our case, we found that the various stages of social entrepreneurship processes (opportunity identification, evaluation, formalization, and exploitation) through which embedded actors develop their ventures were especially enhanced by joint knowledge creation between movements and embedded actors, the construction of producer identities, and direct business support. This study contributes to the social movement literature by showing how movements can bring about change by providing embedded actors with producers’ identities and hands-on support. The literature on social entrepreneurship is also complemented, as we show how motives and behaviors to engage in social entrepreneurship are shaped by social movements, in combination with changes in the degree of embeddedness

Trust and Contracting in Agri-Food Hybrid Structures

The paper aims at examining the hypothesis that the influence of trust on contract can be thought of as a dynamic factor of organizational choices in supply chains. The relationship between contract and trust is delineated on the basis of institutional environment, contractual incompleteness, safeguards and restrictive provisions. The interaction between individual and system elements in the formation of trust and its influence in hybrid contracting is considered. According to a New Institutional Economics approach and a theoretical framework is proposed. Empirical evidence is provided by a case study regarding an Italian retailer company establishing hybrid structure with its suppliers. Investments in suppliers selection provide the basis for trust supporting relationships which economize on negotiating and litigation costs.hybrid structures, trust, contract, Agribusiness, Q13, D23,

Towards a Model of Designing an Organizational Structure in a Knowledge Based Society

The role of the manager in the knowledge society is to lead, in a productive and cost effective manner, a system that is at the crossroads of three worlds: the environment, the human and the organization. To ensure the continuity of the organization, the manager must choose an appropriate structure that would enable it to increase productivity, improve quality of goods and maintain the motivation, satisfaction and involvement of the human factor. Changes promoted by the influences of organizational theories and knowledge management have resulted in reducing the emergence of hierarchical levels, formal control, in a low degree of formalization in general and in the emergence of deconstructed forms. The concept of organizational design is promoted by structuring the organization and seeks to ensure consistency among strategy, structure and incentive systems of the organization, an idea which also represents the basis of the organizational perspective imposed by Mintzberg(1990). This paper builds upon the three main theories that have influenced the design of organizational structure and proposes an integrated model that takes into account the changes promoted by knowledge management and aims at satisfying human resources quantification.structure, organizational design, knowledge management, contingency, model, approach