Social system

About: Social system is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2974 publications have been published within this topic receiving 92395 citations.

Social Signaling and the Organization of Small-Scale Society: The Case of Contact-Era New Guinea

Abstract: Small-scale society furnishes the bread and butter of archeological research. Yet our understanding of what these communities did and how they achieved their purpose is still rudimentary. Using the ethnography of contact-era New Guinea, this paper presents a “social signaling” model of small-scale social systems that archeologists may find useful for contextualizing and interpreting the material record of these societies. It proposes that the organization of small-scale society was oriented, among other goals, towards biological and social reproduction, subsistence optimization, and military defense. To advance these multiple collective interests, however, these communities had to deal with three problems: an optimality problem, a conflict-of-interest problem, and a free-rider problem. The optimality problem was solved with a modular (or segmented) social structure, the conflict-of-interest problem by a process of social signaling, and these two solutions together operated to resolve the free-rider problems they created. In addition to explaining the structure and function of small-scale societies, the model provides a unified framework that can account for the ceremonial behaviors, core cultural conceptions, and leadership forms that these societies generated.

Evolution, Order and Complexity

Abstract: Chapter 1 Social Theory and Naturalism Elias L. Khalil Chapter 2 Inter-facing Complexity at a Boundary Between the Natural and Social Sciences Karl H. PribamChapter 3 The Autonomy of Social Reality: On the Contribution of Systems Theory to the Theory of Society Jean-Pierre Dupuy Chapter 4 Ultradarwinian Explanation and the Biology of Social Systems Niles EldredgeChapter 5 The Complexity of Social and Mental Structures in Non-Human Mammals Hubert Hendrichs Chapter 6 On Social Nature of Autopoietic Systems Milan ZelenyChapter 7 Organization, Function, and Creativity in Biological and Social Systems Vilmos CsanyiChapter 8 Human Society as an Emerging Global Superorganism: A Biological Perspective Gregory B. Stock and John H. Campbell Chapter 9 Neurological and Social Bases of Dominance in Human Society Henri Laborit Chapter 10 The Propensities of Evolving Systems Robert E. Ulanowicz Chapter 11 Life Beyond the Newtonian Paradigm: Creativity, Uncertainty and Learning Peter M. Allen Chapter 12 Human Social Systems as Part of Ecosystems: Aspects Related to Energy and Exosomatic Artifacts Ramon Margalef Chapter 13 Synergetics as a Bridge Between the Natural and Social Sciences Hermann Haken Chapter 14 The Problem of Observables in Models of Biological Organizations Howard H. Pattee

The organizational innovation system: Three modes

Abstract: In this article, we see innovation as a social system, which is an important part of the management environment in an organization such as a firm. We attempt to explain how innovation as a system can capture the attention of actors during changes. Our aim is to analyse the relation between the innovation system and social actors to understand how the social system can determine action during changes. We argue that it is possible to identify three modes of innovation in the management environment that suits such a purpose: (1) a value-based entrepreneurial mode, (2) a technology-based functional mode, and (3) a strategic reflexive mode. In the strategic reflexive mode, which we consider to be the most important today, the innovation system seeks to determine action and capture the attention of actors through strategy and reflexivity.

Probing the interfaces between the social sciences and social-ecological resilience: insights from integrative and hybrid perspectives in the social sciences

Abstract: Social scientists, and scholars in related interdisciplinary fields, have critiqued resilience thinking’s oversimplification of social dimensions of coupled social-ecological systems. Resilience scholars have countered with “where is the ecology” in social analyses? My aim is to contribute to current efforts to strengthen interand transdisciplinary debate and inquiry between the social-ecological resilience community and the social sciences. I synthesize three social science perspectives, which stress the complex, dynamic, and multiscalar interconnections between the biophysical and social realms in explaining social-environmental change, and which place both the social and ecology centre stage in their analyses: materio-spatial world systems analysis, critical realist political ecology, and actor-network theory. By integrating, in a nondeterministic and nonessentialist manner, the biophysical environment into social inquiries (integrative approaches) or by altogether abolishing the ecology/nature and human/culture divide (hybrid perspectives), these three social-science perspectives are well placed to foster stronger interand transdisciplinary ties with social-ecological resilience. Materiospatial world systems analysis is highly compatible with resilience thinking. The emphasis on world systems structures and processes offers the potential to enrich resilience analyses of global environmental change, global governance and stewardship, planetary boundaries, and multiscale resilience. Critical realist political ecology offers avenues for more in-depth interdisciplinary inquiries around local/traditional/indigenous knowledge systems and power. It also challenges resilience scholars to incorporate critical analyses of resilience’s core concepts and practices. Actor-network theory proposes a very different starting point for understanding and assessing social-ecological resilience. Its focus on “resilience-in-the-making” offers unique insights but also pushes the conceptual boundaries of resilience thinking.

Accounting systems and systems of accountability in the New Zealand health sector

Abstract: Studies the transformation of social systems in health organizations in New Zealand and the way in which accounting systems are an integral part of the challenge to extant structures of signification, legitimation and domination. By categorizing various modes or types of social change, and providing analytical means of clarifying social systems, Giddens’s structuration theory is enabling of empirical study. Accounting systems contribute to the binding of time and space in some circumstances, yet can play a part in major discontinuities and disruptions to institutionalized procedures and practices in other circumstances.