Models and Concepts for Socio-Technical Complex Systems: Towards Fractal Social Organizations.

We introduce fractal social organizations-a novel class of socio-technical complex systems characterized by a distributed, bio-inspired, hierarchical architecture. Based on a same building block that is recursively applied at different layers, said systems provide a homogeneous way to model collecti...

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Published in:Systems Research & Behavioral Science Vol. 30; no. 6; pp. 750 - 773
Main Authors: De Florio, Vincenzo, Bakhouya, Mohamed, Coronato, Antonio, Di Marzo, Giovanna
Format: Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell Nov/Dec2013
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: Nov/Dec2013
      vid: 30
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      pub: Wiley-Blackwell
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        92776310
        10.1002/sres.2242
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        atl: Models and Concepts for Socio-Technical Complex Systems: Towards Fractal Social Organizations.
      aug:
        au:
          De Florio, Vincenzo
          Bakhouya, Mohamed
          Coronato, Antonio
          Di Marzo, Giovanna
        affil:
          Performance Analysis of Telecommunication Systems research group, Universiteit Antwerpen and iMinds Interdisciplinary institute for Technology, Antwerp Belgium
          School of Engineering, Aalto University, Helsinki Finland
          Institute for High Performance Computing and Networking, National Research Council, Naples, Italy
          Institute of Services Science, Université Genève, Carouge, Switzerland
      su:
        Systems theory
        System integration
        Fractals
        Biologically inspired computing
        Computational complexity
        Systems design
      sug:
        subj:
          Systems theory
          Computer Systems Design Services
          System integration
          Fractals
          Biologically inspired computing
          Computational complexity
          Systems design
      keyword:
        collective adaptive systems
        distributed organizations
        fractal organizations
        social organizations
        socio-technical systems
        collective adaptive systems
        distributed organizations
        fractal organizations
        social organizations
        socio-technical systems
      ab: We introduce fractal social organizations-a novel class of socio-technical complex systems characterized by a distributed, bio-inspired, hierarchical architecture. Based on a same building block that is recursively applied at different layers, said systems provide a homogeneous way to model collective behaviors of different complexity and scale. Key concepts and principles are enunciated by means of a case study and a simple formalism. As preliminary evidence of the adequacy of the assumptions underlying our systems here, we define and study an algebraic model for a simple class of social organizations. We show how despite its generic formulation, geometric representations of said model exhibit the spontaneous emergence of complex hierarchical and modular patterns characterized by structured addition of complexity and fractal nature-which closely correspond to the distinctive architectural traits of our fractal social organizations. Some reflections on the significance of these results and a view to the next steps of our research conclude this contribution. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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