Event
DIS master class : Modeling organizational dynamics
- 10 - 14 March 2025
- All Day
Location
- Attendance: on site
- Language: EN
Event
DIS master class : Modeling organizational dynamics
Social or economic organizations are instances of complex adaptive systems. That means, they are comprised of a larger number of actors, various types of concurrent interactions and volatile dynamics. Entry and exit, external shocks and decisions under uncertainty challenge their stability and their performance.
How can these characteristics be adequately captured in a formal modeling approach?
This question needs to be tackled from a broader perspective. We first discuss what different classes of models can contribute. Emphasis is on agent-based and network models, which can be implemented in computer simulations using python and mesa. But what level of agent complexity is needed to explain organizational complexity? How do systemic properties emerge?
A second set of issues regards the vulnerability of organizations. We need models to understand under what conditions the failure of a few agents may result in the collapse of a system. Can we predict systemic risk? What is the meaning of resilience and how can it be modeled?
This leads to the problems of systems design, control and interventions, discussed in the third part. To what extent can self-organization be predicted or controlled? Should we follow a bottom-up or a top-down approach to influence systems? And, after all, isn’t creative destruction a driver of organizational evolution?
These questions will be addressed using a broad range of examples, particularly collaboration networks such as research and development alliances of firms or open source software projects. They provide us with long-term data of high resolution, needed for data-driven modeling. More importantly, different from case studies they allow to develop a systemic view why some organizations fail, while others survive and even grow.
Participation in DIS master classes is by invitation only.