Modern cities modelled as “super-cells” rather than multicellular organisms: Implications for industry, goods and services

The structure and “metabolism” (movement and conversion of goods and energy) of urban areas has caused cities to be identified as “super-organisms”, placed between ecosystems and the biosphere, in the hierarchy of living systems. Yet most such analogies are weak, and render the super-organism model ineffective for sustainable development of cities. Via a cluster analysis of 15 shared traits of the hierarchical living system, we found that industrialized cities are more similar to eukaryotic cells than to multicellular organisms; enclosed systems, such as factories and greenhouses, paralleling organelles in eukaryotic cells. We further developed a “super-cell” industrialized city model: a “eukarcity” with citynucleus (urban area) as a regulating centre, and organaras (enclosed systems, which provide the majority of goods and services) as the functional components, and cityplasm (natural ecosystems and farmlands) as the matrix. This model may improve the vitality and sustainability of cities through planning and management

Organisationskultur. Eine Konkretisierung aus systemtheoretischer Perspektive

Kühl S. Organisationskultur. Eine Konkretisierung aus systemtheoretischer Perspektive. Managementforschung. 2018;28(1):7-35.Die Bestimmung des Verhältnisses von Informalität und Organisationskultur bereitet in der Organisationstheorie Schwierigkeiten. Das liegt daran, dass der Begriff Informalität häufig stillschweigend durch den Begriff der Organisationskultur ersetzt wurde, ohne dass dafür eine präzise, abgrenzungsscharfe Definition vorgenommen worden wäre. Unter Rückgriff auf Überlegungen von Dario Rodríguez argumentiert dieser Artikel, dass die beiden Begriffe Organisationskultur und Informalität das gleiche Phänomen bezeichnen: die nichtentschiedenen Entscheidungsprämissen einer Organisation. Dabei wird systematisch zwischen „unentscheidbaren Entscheidungsprämissen“ und „prinzipiell entscheidbaren, aber nicht entschiedenen Entscheidungsprämissen“ unterschieden. Es wird gezeigt, wie sich mit einer präzisen Bestimmung über das Konzept der Entscheidungsprämissen Ordnung in die „wilden Merkmallisten“ der Literatur sowohl über Informalität als auch Organisationskultur bringen lässt und empirische Phänomene genauer erfasst werden können

Coviability, through the lens of the mathematical theory of viability

International audienceViability and coviability are polysemous terms for which nobody can claim ownership. The (mathematical) co-evolution is defined here as "the joint evolution of a state and a given environment". The first is described as a vector of a vector space, the second as a subset of this space, termed "environment". Coviability means that whenever both state and environment evolve, the vector's state always remains in the environment. The (mathematical) theory of viability studies both these evolutions on temporal windows, and proves whether or not evolutionary ‘engines' provide coviable evolutions of both states and environments. Mathematics is a logical process used to demonstrate that a set of hypotheses implies a set of conclusions. A theorem explains 'how' a conclusion answers the 'why' described by these hypotheses. At this stage, demonstrating a theorem is an intellectual activity and not a scientific one. It only becomes so when a mathematical metaphor of an assertion in a different field of knowledge is "validated". This requires validation processes specific to these fields; physics requires experiments, other domains resort to historical validations or more laborious exercises of reflection. This article describes concepts 'motivated' by different fields of life sciences and the 'theorems' that relate them. The article is concerned with "mathematical metaphors", rather than their confirmation which is sometimes hard to justify. The mathematical results are mainly qualitative and different from those obtained with more usual tools motivated by inert matter's sciences. Since scientific concepts only make full sense within the confines of their origins, the history of this concept, motivated by environmental sciences since the 1970s, is broadly outlined