P. M. Allen

• PhD Theoretical Physics
• Professor Emeritus at Cranfield University

In this paper, we look at the impact of different possible changes and innovations in the national/regional infrastructure and of individual households on the reduction of their material ‘footprint’ and carbon emissions. We have developed an ‘agent-based model’ (ABM) that explores the impact of possible changes in regional infrastructure and in ‘ho...

An important aspect of any scientific approach to sustainability must be methods by which the impacts of possible innovations can be assessed. Clearly, we need to make massive changes in our lifestyles if we are to get anywhere near ‘sustainability’. In this paper, an ‘agent-based model’ is developed which for this initial presentation explores pro...

Smart grid research has tended to be compart-mentalised, with notable contributions from economics, electrical engineering and science and technology studies. However, there is an acknowledged and growing need for an integrated systems approach to the evaluation of smart grid initiatives. The capacity to simulate and explore smart grid possibilitie...

The book describes what it means to say the world is complex and explores what that means for managers, policy makers and individuals. The first part of the book is about the theory and ideas and science of complexity. This is explained in a way that is thorough but not mathematical. It compares differing approaches, and also provides a historical...

The paper looks at the potential for multi-utility service providers to create business models that compete with traditional utility product providers whereby customers’ services increase and resource efficiency is improved. The objective in our modeling is to show the how Multi-Utility Service Companies (MUSCos) could invade the market, changing i...

Domestic households account for a significant portion of energy consumption and carbon emissions in the United Kingdom. Gains in energy and resource efficiency are undermined by the continuing rise in consumption. A multiutility service company (MUSCo) could enable households to make efficiency improvements through energy technologies and demand ma...

The residential housing sector is a major consumer of energy accounting for approximately one third of carbon emissions in the United Kingdom. Achieving a sustainable, low-carbon infrastructure necessitates a reduced and more efficient use of domestic energy supplies. Energy service companies offer an alternative to traditional providers, which sup...

As a result of signing the Kyoto Agreement the UK will need to reduce carbon emissions to 20% of their 1990 value by 2050. This will require a complete change in power generation over the next 40years. The system involved is immensely complex, with multiple agents, levels of description, new technologies and new policies and actions. However, here...

Complexity science provides a general mathematical basis for evolutionary thinking. It makes us face the inherent, irreducible nature of uncertainty and the limits to knowledge and prediction. Complex, evolutionary systems work on the basis of on-going, continuous internal processes of exploration, experimentation and innovation at their underlying...

In reality, complexity science provides a general mathematical basis not only for evolutionary economics, but also for evolutionary thinking as a whole. It offers an understanding of inherent, irreducible uncertainty and of limits to knowledge and prediction. Although these are usually experienced as being annoying, they are really the ‘very stuff...

The Complex Adaptive Systems, Cognitive Agents and Distributed Energy (CASCADE) project is developing a framework based on Agent Based Modelling (ABM). The CASCADE Framework can be used both to gain policy and industry relevant insights into the smart grid concept itself and as a platform to design and test distributed ICT solutions for smart grid...

In response to the predictions of climate change models the EU has imposed very strong reductions in carbon emissions for the member nations. As a result the UK is signed up to reduce carbon emissions to 20% of their 1990 value by 2050. This will require a complete change in power generation over the next 40 years. But the system involved is clearl...

This short paper explores the possible advantages of installing a battery within a small neighborhood of one hundred houses. The aim is to see how much we can reduce the peak demand that falls on the local 11kV network. We have modified the CREST standard model for a single dwelling (Richardson & Thomson) by making it run iteratively over 100 house...

This paper elaborates the view that cities as complex systems are typified by co-evolutionary behaviour and organization. As a consequence, cities change, adapt and maintain rich, diverse and varied strategies, sub-optimal behaviours, imperfect information, mistaken inferences and creativity. These aspects of cities are exemplified by reference to...

This chapter provides application of complexity theory in organizational management and evolution. Organizational behavior must be such as to allow organizational evolution, or the organization will fail. The rules that allow organizational evolution are: the presence of mechanisms that produce internal heterogeneity, which will involve freedom, ig...

This article comments on the Visioneer (Envisioning a Socio Economic Knowledge Collider) Project as described in the following white papers [1-3].

New ideas concerning nonequilibrium thermodynamics and the concepts of dissipative structures are seen to have profound implications for evolutionary theory. In particular we stress the idea that organisms possess a hierarchy of adaptive possibilities, which result from a construction of nonlinear systems each capable of structural evolution. The g...

The scientific study of open systems has led to the science of complexity – that is the science of evolutionary change and self-transformation. It applies to systems that can undergo spontaneous, symmetry breaking transformations corresponding to qualitative change with new emergent features, capabilities and processes and do not simply grow or dec...

Once the whole is divided, the parts need names. There are already enough names. One must know when to stop. Knowing when to stop averts trouble. Tao in the world is like a river flowing home to the sea. Lau Tsu, Tao Te Ching.

The SAGE Handbook of Complexity and Management will be the first substantive scholarly work to provide a map of the state of art research in the growing field emerging at the intersection of complexity science and management studies. Edited and written by internationally respected scholars from management and related disciplines, the Handbook will...

A model is developed in which the change in the population distribution of a region is linked to the employment pattern, and this latter in turn to the population distribution through the concepts of central place theory. The result is a dynamic model of interacting urban centers in which the fluctuations (the exact history) of the system play a vi...

In a previous article, Allen and Sanglier (1979), the authors presented a dynamic model of central places based on the mutual interaction of the spatial distribution of population and employment opportunities. The positive feedback inherent in this interaction gives rise to a self-organization of the spatial structure of the system, reflecting both...

Purpose - The purpose of this is to add both to the development of complex systems thinking in the subject area of operations and production management and to the limited number of applications of computational models and simulations from the science of complex systems. The latter potentially offer helpful decision-support tools for operations and...

The consequences of complexity science is inevitable for our understanding of the emergence and evolution of identity and diversity in ecologies and human social systems. Resulting from evolutionary processes in which successive behavioural explorations occurred which enabled the capturing of resources in the system. By comparing examples studying...

The first and main contribution of this article is its access to the decisionmaking processes which drive innovation in policy-making within central government. The article will present a detailed case history of how the innovation came about and conclude by highlighting analytic possibilities for future research. The policy in focus is the UK’s Tr...

Social systems are evolving, multi-scale, spatio-temporal structures with emergent functions, needs and capabilities. One sensible definition of an 'extreme' event would be one that led to some qualitative, structural change in the system, as it went beyond the current 'control limits' of the system. Indeed, we can view any current structure and or...

This research aimed to add both to the development of complex systems thinking in the subject area of Operations and Production Management and to the limited number of applications of computational models and simulations from the science of complex systems. The latter potentially offer helpful decision-support tools for operations and production ma...

In this book, the photoemission has been investigated from various types of quantum wells in ultrathin films, quantum wires, quantum dots, effective mass superlattices, and superlattices with graded interfaces, under different physical conditions which generate useful information regarding photoemission from various materials and their nanostructur...

In 1976 Allen proposed an evolutionary criterion which said that for a new behaviour, variable or population to emerge, first of all a new ‘type’ had to be tried out, and secondly the surrounding system had to be unstable to its appearance. This means that we can understand innovation in terms firstly of the production of a new ‘type’ of product, w...

Purpose – This paper aims to address the advantage of considering an evolutionary classification scheme for commercial aerospace supply chains. It is an industry wide approach. By going beyond the performance of the single firm and considering the whole supply chain for a product a better understanding of present states and performances of the firm...

The paper investigates three levels of learning-adaptive, reactive and expansive-for the transformation of knowledge to enhance innovation and competitive advantage in commercial aerospace supply chains. A perspective of supply chains as complex Activity Networks is used for data analysis based on in-depth interviews in a global setting. Themes for...

A complex adaptive systems perspective is used to examine the sustainability of the supply network in the commercial aerospace manufacturing sector. A framework for the analysis of coevolutionary dynamical change is used which examines the structure, integration methods and process dynamics within the supply network. Multiple methods are used for d...

This article considers cognitive distance and combined competence as predictors of concrete outcomes in co-operative Research and Development projects. The operationalisation is based upon a dedicated survey, answered by matched pairs of projects managers in partnering organisations, addressing technical and scientific competence, R&D management co...

In the aerospace industry competitive advantage is searched through product innovation. This paper sets out to explore the effects that relationship development in the commercial aerospace supply chains have on innovation and competitive advantage. A perspective of supply chains as complex activity networks is used for data analysis based on in-dep...

Implementation studies and related research in organizational theory can be enhanced by drawing on the field of complex systems to understand better and, as a consequence, more successfully manage change. This article reinterprets data previously published in the British Journal of Management to reveal a new contribution, that policy implementation...

Purpose This paper aims to develop an approach for improving linguistic skills to enhance work collaboration. Design/methodology/approach A framework has been developed using principles of complex systems thinking, cultural‐historical activity theory and theories of intercultural communication in an action research setting. Findings Organisationa...

Traditionally, science has attempted to understand urban systems using a reductionist approach in which the behaviour of a system (city or region) is represented as being an equilibrium mechanical interaction of its components. These components are either ‘representative agents’ for the different categories of supply and demand that inhabit the sys...

Planning comes out of a traditional perspective in which it is thought that changes to complex systems such as regions, cities and neighborhoods can and should be controlled. The legitimacy of the ‘control’ is conferred by the idea that a representative public body, a local, regional or national government department or agency, will impose some mea...

The deficiencies of any kind of central planning are exposed by comparison with the paradigm of complex, evolutionary systems. Ideologically, market-democracies borrow that paradigm, subject to the distortions imposed by economic and political concentrations of power that seek control of resources. Economic space-time (geography) is a resource very...

The paper sets out to explore the effects relationships in commercial aerospace supply chains have on innovation and competitive advantage. A perspective of supply chains as complex activity systems is used for data analysis. Competitive advantage is searched through product innovation facilitated by risk-sharing partnerships. This is characterised...

Traditionally, science has attempted to understand urban systems using a reductionist approach in which the behaviour of a system (city or region) is represented as being an equilibrium, mechanical interaction of its components. These components are “representative agents” for the different categories of supply and demand that inhabit the system, a...

Managing supply chains in a dynamic business environment is a challenging task, particularly in the case of multi-product, multi-national supply networks, where different products with very different demand patterns share common resources, specifically production and distribution facilities. This calls for higher levels of resilience and flexibilit...

Managing supply chains in a dynamic business environment is a challenging task, particularly in the case of multi-product, multi-national supply networks, where different products with very different demand patterns share common resources, specifically production and distribution facilities. This calls for higher levels of resilience and flexibilit...

To control and price negative externalities in passenger road transport, we develop an innovative and integrated computational agent-based economics (ACE) model to simulate a market oriented ‘cap’ and trade system. (i) First, there is a computational assessment of a digitized road network model of the real-world congestion hot spot to determine the...

In this paper we look at the manner in which ideas coming from complexity science change our understanding of the cognitive powers of agents that is really necessary to explain the evolution of markets and of firms. The general ideas behind complex systems dynamics and evolution are presented and then two examples are treated in detail. The first i...

If epistemology is about what we know and how we know what we know (what is inside) and ontology is about what there is to know (what is outside) then the most fundamental challenge that complexity makes is that these can no longer be considered as separable. Traditional science was based on the idea that there was an objective reality outside, and...

The co-evolution of information systems (IS) and the processes that underpin the construction and development of IT systems are explained from a complex systems perspective. Evolution operates at the microscopic level; in organizations, this is the individual or agent. Each agent has an idiosyncratic view of the organization, using to some extent p...

This research presents findings from two studies conducted by the Universities of Cranfield and Sheffield, which investigated two complimentary, but unrelated, areas of research – manufacturing cladistics, an evolutionary classification scheme from the biological sciences, and evolutionary systems modelling, from the physical sciences. Using this n...

Complexity is often viewed as principally concerning qualitative, evolutionary change over time. While this is true we look here at how multi-agent modelling, which is part of complexity science, can be used to explore the performance under fluctuating conditions of a given, structurally stable system composed of interacting agents, In a real organ...

Early research on new product development (NPD) has produced descriptive frameworks and models that view the process as a linear system with sequential and discrete stages. More recently, recursive and chaotic frameworks of NPD have been developed, both of which acknowledge that NPD progresses through a series of stages, but with overlaps, feedback...

The question explored in this paper is how change really occurs in socio-economic systems, based on the ideas of 'evolutionary drive' put forward some years ago (Allen & McGlade, 1987). In this view the evolutionary process is driven by the interplay of processes that create micro-diversity, and the selection operated by the differential dynamics o...

Without Abstract

Uncertainty and Surprise in Complex Systems: Questions on Working with the Unexpected SPRINGER Series: Understanding Complex Systems McDaniel, Reuben R.; Driebe, Dean J. (Eds.) In order to improve our quality of life and the successful functioning of our organisations and social institutions, or to mitigate some anticipated problem, we need to unde...

Recent research has identified the NPD process as a complex system whose outcome emerges in real time as a result of the particularities of the experiments and reflections that will actually occur (McCarthy et al., 2006). This means that the precise manner in which exploratory experi- ments are performed really matters, because there is not a prede...

Many of the most successful firms have placed a strong emphasis on strategy. Strategies help de- cision-makers in organizations to think through what the organization needs to achieve and how these needs may be satisfied. This case study considers what the Chief Executive Officers of the top three aerospace manufacturers say about their strategies...

The authors of this book link productivity change, trade competitiveness, networks of interaction and cooperation and income growth in developing Asian countries with the complex evolutionary processes of economic development and international trade. They take an innovative approach to simulating the complex micro-dynamics of competitiveness in ord...

The focus of this paper is on innovation in terms of the new product development processes and to discuss its main features. This is followed by a presentation of the new ideas emerging from complex systems science. It is then demonstrated how complex systems provides an overall conceptual framework for thinking about innovation and for considering...

Instead of modelling socio-economic situations as mechanical systems with fixed, predictable behaviour, we now see that socio-economic systems are really complex systems, in which various possible structural changes can occur giving rise to a range of different possible futures. This necessary future uncertainty automatically imposes an uncertainty...

The inspiration for this special edition came from a series of presentations, and some lively debate, at a workshop held in Budapest at the Central European University1. The theme of that workshop was focused on the topic of ‘Limits to Knowledge—the Implications of Complexity’. The papers in this special edition explore complexity, and the limits t...

With many tools available for industrial sustainability, it appears that problems now lie in implementation. Management uncertainties and other barriers are undermining progress toward sustainable industrial development. With the aim of modelling manufacturing evolution, this paper presents a study that integrates manufacturing cladistics, an evolu...

It is widely recognised that mainstream economics has failed to translate micro consistently into macro economics and to provide endogenous explanations for the continual changes in the economic system. Since the early 1980s, a growing number of economists have been trying to provide answers to these two key questions by applying an evolutionary ap...

This paper presents a view of social systems as evolving, multi-scale, spatio-temporal structures with emergent functions, needs and capabilities. Our models will show that the complexity of these structures means that the decisions taken by any particular actor or agent will necessarily be taken under considerable uncertainty, and this uncertainty...