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

Vincenzo De Florio, Mohamed Bakhouya, Antonio Coronato and Giovanna Di Marzo

Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2013, vol. 30, issue 6, 750-772

Abstract: 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.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2242

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:srbeha:v:30:y:2013:i:6:p:750-772

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=1092-7026

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Systems Research and Behavioral Science from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().