Economists have traditionally studied aggregate behavior as the outcome of individual decisions made interactively, while sociologists have focused on the role of social influences on individual behavior. Over the past decade, however, the barriers between the disciplines have broken down,...

This timely book surveys and illuminates the recent literature on industrial organization by contrasting the analyses based on the idea of "natural" adaptation of industry to environmental conditions and those that focus on the "strategic" dimension and manipulation of environment. Among the...

Despite its haphazard growth, the Web hides powerful underlying regularities--from the organization of its links to the patterns found in its use by millions of users. Many of these regularities have been predicted on the basis of theoretical models based on a field of physics--statistical...

In this revealing study, Larry Hirschhorn examines the rituals, or social defenses, organizations develop to cope with change. Using extended ease studies from offices, factories, and social services, he describes why these often irrational practices that fragment and injure individuals within...

Although social scientists generally agree that technology plays a major role in the economy, economics and technology have yet to be brought together into a coherent framework that is both analytically interesting and empirically oriented. This book draws on the tools of science and technology...

Software has gone from obscurity to indispensability in less than fifty years. Although other industries have followed a similar trajectory, software and its supporting industry are different. In this book the authors explain, from a variety of perspectives, how software and the software...

How do social structures and group behaviors arise from the interaction of individuals? Growing Artificial Societies approaches this question with cutting-edge computer simulation techniques. Fundamental collective behaviors such as group formation, cultural transmission, combat, and trade are...

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests presents an innovative synthesis of research in different disciplines to argue that cooperation stems not from the stereotypical selfish agent acting out of disguised self-interest but from the presence of "strong reciprocators" in a social group....

For many companies, the past decade has been marked by a sense of turbulence and redefinition. The growing role of information technologies and service businesses has prompted companies to reconsider how they are structured and even what business they are in. These changes have also affected how...

In the Guadalupe Dunes, 170 miles north of Los Angeles and 250 miles south of San Francisco, an oil spill persisted unattended for 38 years. Over the period 1990-1996, the national press devoted 504 stories to the Exxon Valdez accident and a mere nine to the Guadalupe spill—even though the...