Systemic Business Community

In the first session of the SIG on Systems Applications in Business and Industry at Tokyo 2007, three papers are scheduled:

• Pamela Buckle and G. Keith Henning, “Intervening in Counterproductive Self-Organized Dynamics in the Workplace”, on the JournalsISSS Proceedings with an Abstract; and on the CDROM as paper #21;
• Hisanori Terasawa and Toshizumi Ohta, “A Model of Demand Chain Management with Virtual Interactions”, on the JournalsISSS Proceedings with an Abstract and PDF versions, and on the CDROM as paper #494;
• Yong Pan, “Internet Consumer’s Behavior Under the Cyber “Lemon”: the Case From the Internet Markets in China”, on the JournalsISSS Proceedings with an Abstract and PDF, and HTML versions, and on the CDROM as paper #773.

The abstracts and papers and now readily accessible from the JournalsISSS Proceedings. I encourage you at least read the abstracts (only a paragraph or two), and/or read the papers in depth, prior to attending the meeting. This will enable you to have deeper conversations with the author(s) on their work, advancing your personal learning.

In my role a SIG chair, I’ve clustered this diverse group of papers together, possibly described in a theme of “productive organizations and pathologies”.

• Pamela Buckle — a long-time contributor to the SIG on SABI — and her co-author Keith Henning recognize the property of emergent behaviour in organizations. From a study of workplace patterns for counterproductive behaviours that might emerge, she is developing some foundations for appropriate interventions.
• Hisanori Terasawa and Toshizumi Ohta look at demand chain management, involving customers into the design and development processes. They focus on consumers mediated through the Internet, and have constructed an agent-based model. Building on the Buckle and Henning work, we may discuss how the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of consumers by company representatives may be handled when a request has not been predefined within the prior scope of offerings by the company.
• Yong Pan focus Akerlof’s “lemons” model to Internet consumer markets in China. He concludes that the situation is worse than other countries, and improvement could be introduced through additional institutional support (e..g trusted third parties or law enforcement). Building on Buckle and Henning’s work, counterproductivity becomes a market impact. Building on Terasawa and Ohta’s work leads to questions about how the “lemons” model would apply for high-involvement products, e.g. customized goods, in the extreme case.

The above description is just one way to synthesize the three papers. Please feel free to post your comments below, aligned with this guidance, or suggest alternative directions on thinking through the session as a whole.