Heterarchical Organization Research Articles

What can plant science learn from animal nervous systems?

I welcome Segundo-Ortin & Calvo’s (2023) call for a rigorous science of plant behavior and physiology. My commentary addresses three points drawn from the literature on animal brains that could help elucidate the possibility of cognition and sentience in plants: (1) the presumed requirement of a centralized brain; (2) centralization of control versus heterarchical organization; and (3) connecting plant research with research on animal nervous systems.

Dijital Reklamcılık Uygulamacıları Olarak Freelance Çalışanlar Üzerine Bir Araştırma

Dijital medya, reklamcılık uygulamalarını içerik ve biçim açısından dönüştürdüğü gibi, endüstrinin aktörlerini ve çalışma biçimlerini de etkilemektedir. Bu etkilerden biri reklamcılıkta freelance çalışmanın artmasıdır. Bu çalışma, reklamcılık ve ilgili pazarlama iletişimi uygulamalarında freelance çalışma modelini iş süreçleri, yaratıcılık, verimlilik, emek ve girişimcilik gibi kavramlar odağında incelemeyi; modelin avantajlarını ve dezavantajlarını tartışmayı amaçlamaktadır. Araştırma için nitel yaklaşım benimsenmiş; yaşları 22 ile 36 arasında değişen on (dört kadın ve altı erkek) freelance çalışanla yarı yapılandırılmış derinlemesine görüşmeler gerçekleştirilmiştir. Örneklem, reklamcılık uygulamalarının yaratıcı, veriye dayalı ve proje yönetimi boyutlarını temsil etmektedir. Araştırma gerek işletme büyüklüğü gerek sektörel çeşitlilik açısından freelance çalışmanın yaygınlığını ortaya koymaktadır. Temel bulgular; dijital teknolojilerin, çevrimiçi emek platformlarının, heterarşik yapılanmanın ve işin geçiciliğinin önemini vurgulamaktadır. Freelance çalışmanın başlıca sorunları arasında sosyal izolasyon ve dijital platformlardaki yoğun rekabet öne çıkmaktadır. Çalışma ekonomisi açısından bakıldığında, freelance çalışanların kendilerini emek tarafından girişimciliğe uzanan bir yolculuk içerisinde tarif ettiği belirtilebilir.

Ecological community: Heterarchical organization in a contemporary agri-food system in Northern Andes

Andean-based archeological evidence suggests the existence of heterarchical pre-Columbian societies organized as egalitarian and resource-specialized communities with the capacity to create and maintain intensive productive systems. Using Stark’s analytical framework, we explore the current heterarchical organization of the indigenous Ecuadorian community of Caliata in the context of local cosmovision, identity, and customary institutions. Caliata’s heterarchy is expressed by distributed intelligence through diverse and specialized organizational units that are in constant negotiation in order to reach consensus and to procure optimal responses to uncertainty. The organizational factors at play in mobilizing agri-food systems are key to understanding ancient technologies currently used to support sustainable food security.

The Majiayao to Qijia transition: exploring the intersection of technological and social continuity and change

The transition between the Majiayao (5300–4000 BP) and Qijia (4200–3500 BP) “cultures” in what is now northwestern China’s Gansu Province has typically been defined by major technological changes in pottery forms, subsistence practices, and site locations. These changes are thought to have been driven by a combination of climate change induced cooling and drying as well as human migration into the region from areas further east. Based on our review of literature on the topic, as well as recent fieldwork in the northern Tao River Valley, we suggest that the picture is significantly more complex, with some new technologies slowly being experimented with, adopted, or rejected, while many other aspects of production and social organization persisted over hundreds of years. We hypothesize that these changes reflect the active agency of the inhabitants of southern Gansu during the fifth and fourth millennia BP balancing long-standing cultural traditions with influxes of new technologies. Unlike some societies in other regions at this time, however, increasing technological specialization does not appear to have resulted in growing social inequality, but the archaeological material instead reflects increasingly complex heterarchical organization.

Economic and Social Interactions in the Piedmont Village Tradition-Mississippian Boundarylands of Southeastern North America, AD 1200–1600

This research seeks to understand the economic and social interaction patterns among dispersed Piedmont Village Tradition communities in the North American Southeast, AD 1200–1600. Piedmont Village Tradition communities lived adjacent to Mississippian societies and have been categorized as a peripheral society because of this spatial relationship. We examine economic behaviors by constructing fall-off curves of local versus nonlocal lithic material proportions at settlement sites and examining the reduction behaviors and tool types at sites. The results support a possible gateway model for the acquisition and distribution of nonlocal materials that linked spatially proximate communities. To examine social interaction patterns, we conducted a Brainerd-Robinson analysis of ceramic attributes from six sites and combined our results with work by Rogers (1993). The results show sites with stylistic similarities are not the same sites that share lithic resources. We conclude that these spatially non-overlapping artifact patterns result from a heterarchical social organization with a high degree of independence between economic and social interactions. Finally, we contextualize our results within the current knowledge of Mississippian and Piedmont Village Tradition societies in the region to broaden the discussion of gateways in reciprocity-based economies, societies traditionally thought of as peripheral to complex societies, and coalescence.

Management controls, heterarchy and innovation: a case study of a start-up company

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consider how organizations with diverse, interdependent functions with differing evaluative principles and differing ideas as to which behaviors are the most desirable, use management controls in their efforts to achieve innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a case study of TechCo, an Australian technology start-up company, over a 12 month period.FindingsThe authors demonstrate how the clash of differing evaluative principles among interdependent teams led to the organization seeking new ways of organizing, which in turn, enabled the organization to better manage the interdependencies between the diverse functional areas. Additionally, the findings show how, through the use of management control systems, the organization was able to promote idea generation and “buy-in” across all functional areas, order competing priorities for innovation and set the agenda as to what constituted “acceptable” innovation for the organization to pursue.Originality/valueThe authors find that management controls play an important role in managing the tensions between differing evaluative principles in diverse functional areas in a heterarchical organization, and in supporting innovation in such an environment. As such, the authors provide the first research evidence on how management controls are used within a heterarchy to generate and select innovative ideas.

Heterarchical social organizations and relational models: Understanding gender biases in psychological science

In the present study, we sought to explain changes in the proportion of men and women working within North American psychological science in terms of a heterarchical social organization defined by norms and conventions of society, the structure of higher-education institutions, as well as scientific communities. Using archival records from psychology within the U.S., we found that the demographic shift from male-dominated to female-dominated reflects an asymptotic relationship that has been established in the last two decades. An examination of three potential indicators of status (PhD department appointments, general science awards, and scientific awards in psychology) did not indicate a similar trend compared to the ascension of women within psychological science. We believe that this reflects a heterarchical structure: disparate criteria were used to assign women’s status in the social networks of academic institutions and scientific research. Moreover, we also claim that the increase in the number of women and “female-associated” topics has resulted in a general change in the status of psychology.

The organization of dissonance in Adena-Hopewell societies of eastern North America

Social complexity increased dramatically during the Middle Woodland period (c. 200 bc–ad 500) in eastern North America. Adena-Hopewell societies during this period built massive burial mounds, constructed complex geometric earthen enclosures and maintained extensive trade networks in exotic craft goods. These material signatures suggest that coalition and consensus were sustained through social bonds since clear evidence for top-down leadership does not exist in Adena-Hopewell archaeology. Here, a framework grounded in new understandings of heterarchy is used to explore how coalitions were formed, organized, maintained and/or shifted as a means to coordinate labour and ritual among Middle Woodland Period groups. Through re-analysis of the Wright Mound in Kentucky, and its burial contents, new insights into heterarchical organization are used to achieve a wider, diachronic understanding of how humans in the past reached, realized and rearranged forms of consensus and coalition.

In Defense of Hierarchy: The Hypermodern Structure in U.S. Military and Multinational Corporations

Multinational corporations (MNCs) have had difficulty implementing the heterarchical organizational form defined by Hedlund (1986, 1993). Unlike hierarchical organizations, heterarchical organizations possess the following attributes: (1) a multidimensional structure with respect to knowledge, action, and position of authority, (2) asymmetric ordering of the dimensions, (3) temporary subordination and simultaneous sub- and superordination, (4) nontransitivity and circularity, (5) horizontality, and (6) normative, goal-oriented direction. Although unadulterated heterarchy is not an achievable state, examples from the U.S. military demonstrate how heterarchical principles may be applied in practice. This paper contributes to the extant literature by demonstrating that the heterarchical principles employed by the U.S. military are applicable within MNCs. We posit that a heterarchical structure permits the intentional creation of organized chaos, which in turn allows an MNC to deal with a complex environment ...

PROBING THE IMPLICATIONS OF FACEBOOK USE FOR THE ORGANIZATIONAL FORM OF SOCIAL MOVEMENT ORGANIZATIONS

This article examines the use of Facebook by social movement organizations (SMOs) and the ramifications from that usage for their organizational form. Organizational forms have been viewed to be in flux as networked communication becomes embedded in mobilization repertoires. In what follows, it is shown that the utilization of Facebook by networked heterarchical organizations is seen to grant them access to a hitherto untapped demographic for the purpose of mobilization. Concurrently, questions are raised pertaining to organizational form, particularly in relation to the role the Facebook audience plays in movement organizations. Communication on Facebook may catalyze deliberation, information sharing and mobilization. Moreover, evidence was found pointing to its use for the self-organization of protest participation. Yet, engagement between SMOs and their Facebook audience bore little on decision-making within the organizations. Although limited in scope, the emerging contribution of such communication may be by way of channelling items into decision-making agendas.

Probing the Implications of Facebook Use of the Organizational Form of Social Movement Organizations

This article examines the use of Facebook by social movement organizations (SMOs) and the ramifications from that usage for their organizational form. Organizational forms have been viewed to be in flux as networked communication becomes embedded in mobilization repertoires. In what follows, it is shown that the utilization of Facebook by networked heterarchical organizations is seen to grant them access to a hitherto untapped demographic for the purpose of mobilization. Concurrently, questions are raised pertaining to organizational form, particularly in relation to the role the Facebook audience plays in movement organizations. Communication on Facebook may catalyze deliberation, information sharing and mobilization. Moreover, evidence was found pointing to its use for the self-organization of protest participation. Yet, engagement between SMOs and their Facebook audience bore little on decision-making within the organizations. Although limited in scope, the emerging contribution of such communication may be by way of channelling items into decision-making agendas.

Predictive brains: forethought and the levels of explanation

A commentary on Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science by Clark, A. (in press). Behav. Brain Sci. Is any unified theory of brain function possible? Following a line of thought dating back to the early cybernetics (see, e.g., Cordeschi, 2002), Clark (in press) has proposed the action-oriented Hierarchical Predictive Coding (HPC) as the account to be pursued in the effort of gaining the “Grand Unified Theory of the Mind”—or “painting the big picture,” as Edelman (2012) put it. Such line of thought is indeed appealing, but to be effectively pursued it should be confronted with experimental findings and explanatory capabilities (Edelman, 2012). The point we are making in this note is that a brain with predictive capabilities is certainly necessary to endow the agent situated in the environment with forethought or foresight, a crucial issue to outline the unified account advocated by Clark. But the capacity for forethought is deeply entangled with the capacity for emotions and when emotions are brought into the game, cognitive functions become part of a large-scale functional brain network. However, for such complex networks a consistent view of hierarchical organization in large-scale functional networks has yet to emerge (Bressler and Menon, 2010), whilst heterarchical organization is likely to play a strategic role (Berntson et al., 2012). This raises the necessity of a multilevel approach that embraces causal relations across levels of explanation in either direction (bottom–up or top–down), endorsing mutual calibration of constructs across levels (Berntson et al., 2012). Which, in turn, calls for a revised perspective on Marr's levels of analysis framework (Marr, 1982). In the following we highlight some drawbacks of Clark's proposal in addressing the above issues.

Complexity and Sustainability: Perspectives from the Ancient Maya and the Modern Balinese

Complexity is both a buzzword and a paradigm in the biophysical sciences and, increasingly, the social sciences. We define “social complexity” as the nonlinear escalation of costs and emergent infrastructure with rising energy use and concentrated power as societies develop. Two paths to social complexity are technotasking, which relies on technological break-throughs and is often politically hierarchical, and labortasking, which relies on skilled labor pools and is often heterarchical. We suggest several pathways to greater degrees of complexity and present two case studies emphasizing the role of labor-tasking; an in-depth review of the ancient Maya and a shorter introduction to the recent Balinese. Both of these complex societies used labortasking to adapt to local ecological limitations in semitropical settings. These societies used heterarchical organizations to accretionally engineer and manage their environments, strategies that promoted long-term resilience. Case studies such as these provide a nuanced picture of different paths to social complexity and highlight their relative costs, benefits, and potential for long-term sustainability.

The infrastructure of the timed EOPNs-based multiple-objective real-time scheduling system for 300 mm wafer fab

Modern semiconductor wafer fabrication systems are changing from 200 mm to 300 mm wafer processing, and with the dual promises of more chips per wafer and economy of scale, leading semiconductor manufacturers are attracted to developing and implementing 300 mm wafer fabs. However, in today's dynamic and competitive global market, a successful semiconductor manufacturer has to excel in multiple performance indices, such as manufacturing cycle time and on-time delivery, and simultaneously optimize these objectives to reach the best-compromised system achievement. To cope with this challenge, in this paper, the infrastructure of a timed EOPNs-based multiple-objective real-time scheduling system (MRSS) is proposed to tackle complex 300 mm wafer fabs. Four specific performance objectives pursued by contemporary semiconductor manufacturers are integrated into a priority-ranking algorithm, which can serve as the initial scheduling guidance, and then all wafer lots will be dynamically dispatched by the real-time state-dependent dispatching system. This dispatching control system is timed EOPN-based and adopts a heterarchical organization that leads to a better real-time performance and adaptability. As the foundation of real-time schedule, the timed EOPNs modelling approach is expounded in detail, and the prototype of the MRSS simulation system is also provided.

Multi-site coordination using a multi-agent system

A new approach of coordination of decisions in a multi-site system is proposed. It is based this approach on a multi-agent concept and on the principle of distributed network of enterprises. For this purpose, each enterprise is defined as autonomous and performs simultaneously at the local and global levels. The basic component of our approach is a so-called virtual enterprise node (VEN), where the enterprise network is represented as a set of tiers (like in a product breakdown structure). Within the network, each partner constitutes a VEN, which is in contact with several customers and suppliers. Exchanges between the VENs ensure the autonomy of decision, and guarantee the consistency of information and material flows. Only two complementary VEN agents are necessary: one for external interactions, the negotiator agent (NA) and one for the planning of internal decisions, the planner agent (PA). If supply problems occur in the network, two other agents are defined: the tier negotiator agent (TNA) working at the tier level only and the supply chain mediator agent (SCMA) working at the level of the enterprise network. These two agents are only active when the perturbation occurs. Otherwise, the VENs process the flow of information alone. With this new approach, managing enterprise network becomes much more transparent and looks like managing a simple enterprise in the network. The use of a multi-agent system (MAS) allows physical distribution of the decisional system, and procures a heterarchical organization structure with a decentralized control that guaranties the autonomy of each entity and the flexibility of the network.

The organization of responsiveness: innovation and recovery in the trading rooms of Lower Manhattan

What is the organizational basis of responsiveness under conditions of crisis? In this essay we examine a trading room that was damaged in the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. What did the crisis reveal about the social practices and the technological tools of trading? Drawing on ethnographic field research prior to September 11th, we show how the heterarchical (as opposed to hierarchical) organization of the trading room contributed to innovation on an ongoing basis. Drawing on our subsequent observations in the relocated trading room and focus group discussions with executives in other World Trade Center financial firms, we show that similarly heterarchical features contributed to innovation in response to crisis. Under conditions of radical uncertainty, one cannot know in advance what resources one will need, or even know in advance what might be a resource. Laterally distributed intelligence and a tolerance of multiple registers of valuation and interaction provide generative structures of resourcefulness where the replicative redundancy of contingency planning confronts its limits. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of our findings on innovation, location and responsiveness for the changing urban geography of finance and the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.

Organiser la réactivité. Innovation et reconstruction dans les salles de marché du Lower Manhattan

The organization of responsiveness: innovation and recovery in the trading rooms of Lower Manhattan Daniel Beunza, David Stark What is the organizational basis of responsiveness under conditions of crisis? In this essay we examine a trading room that was damaged in the September llth attack on the World Trade Center. What did the crisis reveal about the social practices and the technological tools of trading? Drawing on ethnographic field research prior to September llth, we show how the heterarchical (as opposed to hierarchical) organization of the trading room contributed to innovation on an ongoing basis. Drawing on our subsequent observations in the relocated trading room and focus group discussions with executives in other World Trade Center financial firms, we show that similarly heterarchical features contributed to innovation in response to crisis. Under conditions of radical uncertainty, one cannot know in advance what resources one will need, or even know in advance what might be a resource. Laterally distributed intelligence and a tolerance of multiple registers of valuation and interaction provide generative structures of resourcefulness where the replicative redundancy of contingency planning confronts its limits. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of our findings on innovation, location and responsiveness for the changing urban geography of finance and the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan.

Archaeological Perspectives on the Rise of the Okinawan State

This paper presents an examination of processes of secondary state formation that occurred during the emergence of the Ryukyu Kingdom, in southwestern Japan, from the tenth to seventeenth centuries A.D. These processes include the influx of new populations, the appearance of new subsistence strategies and political groupings, shifting patterns of long-distance trade, the development of new patterns of foreign relations with China and Japan, the creation of indigenous culture and new ideology, and the transformation of gender hierarchy. I examine these processes from the perspective of political leadership and the nature of political hierarchy, concluding that the Okinawan case is distinctive in its heterarchical organization. The corporate, collective nature of Okinawan communities was overlain by a state-level network system that developed at the time of tributary linkages with China in the fourteenth century A.D.

Floodplains and the Development of Complex Society: Comparative Perspectives from the West African Semi‐arid Tropics

The diverse nature of iron‐using societies in the semi‐arid tropics of West Africa is illustrated by the very different sequences of growth and change in the floodplains of the Middle Senegal Valley and the Inland Niger Delta during the first millennium A.D. The Inland Delta is characterized by a pattern of rapid population growth over the course of centuries‐long occupation in very large, high‐density settlement mound clusters. The Middle Senegal Valley has low‐density occupation in fairly regularly spaced small villages. These differences are due, in part, to differences in the size, distribution of critical resources, and nature of subsistence scheduling conflicts and opportunities in the two floodplains. Faced with similar risks to agriculture posed by chaotic variation in the timing and extent of annual flooding, societies on both floodplains have responded in broadly similar ways historically by developing subsistence specializations that are integrated through exchange. Despite the large scale and considerable integration of first millennium societies in the Inland Niger Delta, the clustered settlement pattern that persisted even through the period of maximum population density at around A.D. 1000 indicates that centralizing pressures did not succeed in producing an effective administrative hierarchy at that time. Rather, various models of heterarchical organization provide a better “fit” for the archaeological data currently available. In the Middle Senegal Valley, on the other hand, the small and relatively dispersed nature of settlement around A.D. 900 should not immediately be assumed to indicate simple, autonomous, village‐level organization. Here, the possibility that complex territorial units composed of overlapping territories of subsistence specialists had already emerged in the first millennium deserves consideration. As archaeology works to counterbalance its long‐standing focus on vertical hierarchies as the primary modality of complexity, the archaeological sequences in these two African floodplains offer insights into the various ways that specialization, trade, population heterogeneity, and even urban growth may have emerged and flourished relatively unconnected to the development of social stratification and centralized power.

Strategies for Global R&D

The coordinated network company places priority on innovation networks and the management of R&D/technology as key factor in worldwide innovation. OVERVIEW: Increasingly, multinational enterprises face simultaneous pressures for global integration and local responsiveness. Both management theorists and managers believe that, to respond to this challenge, the international company should be managed as coordinated network. This model insists on the relevance of an international innovation network, on global management of technology, and on the capability to leverage the best elements of each location to global benefit. This implies that companies disperse their R&D facilities in different countries to much larger extent than in the past. An R&D structure should be designed to fulfill three main tasks: constituent technology development, product development, and technical support to other functions. The drivers of internationalization, the locational determinants, and the management processes are unique to each task. For 20 years, we have witnessed the globalizing of competition in many industries. In the early 1980s, studies of international competition identified broad range of models. At one end, there is the multidomestic competitive model, in which competition in one is independent of competition in other At the other end, there are industries in which competition is seen as global, and a company's competition position in one is greatly influenced by its position in another country (1). Companies have come to recognize that each strategy has its weaknesses. The multidomestic approach tends to reproduce many operations of company's value chain in each country, making it impossible to capture the synergies linked to that company's presence in different A purely global strategy is vulnerable to fluctuating exchange rates and to political volatility. Companies have thus been searching for new and different models of competition. Prahalad and Doz point out that multinational companies should strike balance between global integration and the capacity for local response (2). Integration refers to the management of geographically dispersed operations, whereas strategy based on local response tends to push resource allocation decisions down to subsidiaries. A combination of these strategies requires strategic coordination, which Prahalad and Doz define as: centralized management of the processes of allocating resources to number of countries. Here, the multinational company is seen as centrally coordinated network. This means that each facility is considered contributor to the company's global earnings, specializing the roles of the individual subsidiaries, fine-tuning different strategic perspectives, coordinating geographically dispersed capabilities and resources, exploiting the company's presence in different locations, and sharing globally both technological and market know-how (3,4). Different names have been given to these new organizational forms of multinational company: the multifocal company (2), the transnational firm (3), the heterarchical organization (5), the horizontal company (6). I shall refer to this organizational and competitive model as the coordinated network company. The coordinated network model emphasizes the role of innovation networks and the management of global R&D and technology as key factor in worldwide innovation. The Process of Internationalizing R&D The recent growth of international competition and the globalization of scientific and technological operations have forced companies to disperse their R&D operations in different countries and to design, put in place and manage an R&D infrastructure globally, so as to improve their capacity for technological innovation. Companies that adopt the purely global model generally concentrate their operations in one or more …