27-28 Jan 2014
Bournemouth, U.K.
The Society for the Study of Articial Intelligence and the Simulation of
Behaviour (AISB)
Workshop 27-28 January 2014
Call for Abstracts
Modelling Organisational Behaviour and Social Agency
Workshop coordinators: Davide Secchi and Martin Neumanny
The event is hosted by Bournemouth University, Executive Business Centre,
89 Holdenhurst Road, BH8 8EB, Bournemouth, UK
Agent-based models (ABMs) allow to observe the com- plexity of a system's
interactions in the making. This is of interest for the social sciences
because of a presumed onto- logical correspondence of agents with the
atoms of social life (Squazzoni, 2012). An agent can be anything from
states Axelrod (1995) to socio-cultural structures (e.g., Neumann, 2008,
2010), to the environment (Drogul et al., 1995). This methodological
vagueness can be the scrutinised with the theoretical question of what is
the basic unit for the anal- ysis of social systems in-between culture,
organisation, in- teractions, and the body (e.g., Gilbert, 2008; Gilbert &
Troitzsch, 2005). This is of particular relevance for the analysis of
organisations (Fioretti, 2013; Miller & Lin, 2010; Secchi, 2013; Zhang &
Zhang, 2007).
We would like to bring together a group of people that is interested in
any aspect of ABM of social agents in or- ganisations. We invite
submissions that seek to examine the applications, structure, how-to,
potentials, and philo- sophical and theoretical underpinnings of ABMs
applied to organisational behaviour and social agency. The work- shop
welcomes contributions from any discipline, including but not limited to
psychology, sociology, management, com- puter science, cognitive science,
artificial intelligence, eco- nomics, philosophy. Submissions may range
from empirical investigations to theoretical and philosophical studies.
The agenda of the workshop is set by but not restricted to questions such
as the following:
- How do individuals process information, internalise norms, behaviours
and, more broadly, set exchange mechanisms with external resources?
- How may this be modelled as a socially distributed cog- nitive system
(Hutchins, 1995) that supports socially- extended decision making (i.e.,
`docility' Simon, 1993; Secchi & Bardone, 2009)?
- What are the advantages to analyse social and organi- sational phenomena
such as conict, unethical and ir- rational behaviour, misinterpretation of
norms, band- wagon or snob effects via ABMs and how would this advance our
knowledge?
- What is the link, if any, between distributed cognition (Hutchins, 1995)
and ABMs?
Abstracts of up to 1,000 words (excluding references, ta- bles, figures,
etc.), double-space, standard font should be submitted by November 3, 2013
, midnight, Lon- don time. Recommendations on submitted abstracts will be
notified by December 1, 2013. Please send your manuscript as an email
attachment to Davide Secchi, ex- tendable.rationality@gmail.com, subject
line: "Paper Sub- mission - ABM Workshop." Please feel free to email with
any questions you might have on proposals, fit, topics, pro- cess, etc.
If your proposal is accepted, registration is expected by De- cember 15 .
All events sponsored by the AISB require par- ticipants to become members
of the society. Information on membership can be found here
http://www.aisb.org.uk/ . We see this as a way to thank AISB for
supporting the event.
Registration to the workshop is made via the regis- tration form
https://bournemouthbusiness.qualtrics. com/SE/?SID=SV_eaqPFLcXymUjb7f .
When registering you will be asked to provide the AISB membership number
as proof that you are member and can attend the workshop.
Summary of important dates:
- November 3, 2013|submission deadline
- December 1, 2013|notice of acceptance
- December 15, 2013|registration deadline
- January 27-28, 2014|workshop
The plan is to publish the papers presented at the work- shop in a book,
edited by Davide Secchi and Martin Neu- mann. If the workshop is
successful, we may extend it to a series of events and publication
initiatives. This is a tenta- tive schedule of what happens after the
workshop:
- March 16, 2014|submission of full papers
- June 15, 2014|peer reviews due
- July 13, 2014|revised chapters due
- November-December 2014|publication (depends on
the publishing company)
References
Axelrod, R. (1995). A model of the emergence of new political actors. In
N. Gilbert & R. Conte (Eds.), Arti_cial Societies: The Computer Simulation
of Social Life. London: UCL Press.
Drogul, A., Corbara, B., & Lalande, S. (1995). MANTA: New experimental
results on the emergence of (arti_cial) ant soci- eties. In N. Gilbert &
R. Conte (Eds.), Arti_cial Societies: The Computer Simulation of Social
Life. London: UCL Press.
Fioretti, G. (2013). Agent-based simulation models in organi- zation
science. Organizational Research Methods, 16 (2), 227{ 242.
Gilbert, N. (2008). Agent-Based Models, volume 153 of Quan- titative
Applications in the Social Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Gilbert, N. & Troitzsch, K. G. (2005). Simulation for the Social
Scientist. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press: Cam- bridge, MA.
Miller, K. D. & Lin, S.-J. (2010). Di_erent truths in di_erent worlds.
Organization Science, 21 (1), 97{114.
Neumann, M. (2008). Homo socionicus: A case study of sim- ulation models
of norms. Journal of Arti_cial Societies and Social Simulation, 11 (4), 6.
Neumann, M. (2010). Norm internalisation in human and ar- ti_cial
intelligence. Journal of Arti_cial Societies and Social
Simulation, 13 (1), 12.
Secchi, D. (2013). Agent-based models for management: An overview of
advantages with one example. In European Academy of Management Annual
Conference.
Secchi, D. & Bardone, E. (2009). Super-docility in organizations.
International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior, 12 (3),
339{379.
Simon, H. A. (1993). Altruism and economics. American Eco- nomic Review,
83 (2), 156{161.
Squazzoni, F. (2012). Agent-Based Computational Sociology. Chichester:
Wiley.
Zhang, T. & Zhang, D. (2007). Agent-based simulation of con- sumer
purchase decision-making and the decoy e_ect. Journal of Business
Research, 60, 912{922.