This article presents an agent-based modelof Prato, an Italian textile district where thousands ofsma1l firms specialise into tiny phases of the whole production process. It is an empirical model atscale 1: 1 that reconstructs the information flows between economic actors and connects them...

Organizational theory has construed complexity as an objective characteristic of either the structure or the behaviour of an organization. We argue that to further our understanding it should be understood in terms of human cognition of a structure or behavior. This cognitive twist is...

Distributed control is a technology and a design philosophy that, albeit superior to centralized control, cannot spread because it would require restructuring existing industries. It survives, however, in specific market niches. In this case-study we report on a small firm creating a novel...

Agent-based simulation models allow to reproduce the structure of interactions between the members of an organization, deriving organizational decision-making from individual behavior. This article explains the philosophy of agent-based models, expounds exemplary applications to crucial issues...

We reconstruct Cohen, March and Olsen's Garbage Can model of organizational choice as an agent-based model. In the original model, the members of an organization can postpone decision-making. We add another means for avoiding making decisions, that of buck-passing difficult problems to...

Cohen, March and Olsen\'s Garbage Can Model (GCM) of organizational choice represent perhaps the first – and remains by far the most influential –agent-based representation of organizational decision processes. According to the GCM organizations are conceptualized as crossroads of...