This book covers the proceedings from the 2016 International Symposium on Chaos, Complexity and Leadership, and reflects current research results of chaos and complexity studies and their applications in various fields. Included are research papers in the fields of applied nonlinear methods, modeling of data and simulations, as well as theoretical achievements of chaos and complex systems. Also discussed are leadership and management applications of chaos and complexity theory.

This book demonstrates that innovative ideas are systematically constructed in the creative space spanned by the dimensions of systems thinking and knowledge management. Readers will be introduced to this proposition in the final chapter, after learning about the key innovation theories, design thinking, systems thinking, and idea creation methods in systems science and knowledge science. The content provided throughout the book supports knowledge creation in various fields, the management of research and business projects, and the creation of promotion stories for products and services. Practitioners who are seeking to create innovative ideas can systematically learn the minimum theories and methods required, while graduate students will be equipped to link their research to innovation by learning the essence of systems science and knowledge science and considering selected issues. Lastly, the book includes suggestions for future research directions in knowledge science.

This book presents the latest tools, techniques, and solutions that decision makers use to overcome the challenges faced by their sustainable supply chains. Given the ever increasing significance of socio-economic and environmental factors, the management of sustainable supply chains has become a complex and dynamic task. Multiple and conflicting objectives of stakeholders including suppliers, manufacturers, service providers, and retailers add to the complexity of decisions that modern day managers of supply chains face. With the unprecedented technological developments and innovations at hand, sustainability can be maximized for all the activities of a supply chain including: service concept and product design, material sourcing and procurement, manufacturing processes, delivery of the final product, and end-of-life management of the product. Consequently, the sustainable supply chains' problems require a systematic and integrated approach. Modeling and simulation, in general, as well as system dynamics and agent-based modeling, in particular, have the capabilities to deal with the complexity of sustainable supply chain related problems. This book will appeal to professionals and researchers in the field.

This book discusses how to build optimization tools able to generate better future studies. It aims at showing how these tools can be used to develop an adaptive learning environment that can be used for decision making in the presence of uncertainties. The book starts with existing fuzzy techniques and multicriteria decision making approaches and shows how to combine them in more effective tools to model future events and take therefore better decisions. The first part of the book is dedicated to the theories behind fuzzy optimization and fuzzy cognitive map, while the second part presents new approaches developed by the authors with their practical application to trend impact analysis, scenario planning and strategic formulation. The book is aimed at two groups of readers, interested in linking the future studies with artificial intelligence. The first group includes social scientists seeking for improved methods for strategic prospective. The second group includes computer scientists and engineers seeking for new applications and current developments of Soft Computing methods for forecasting in social science, but not limited to this.

Based on many years of applied research, modeling and educating future decision makers, the authors have selected the critical set of mathematical modeling skills for decision analysis to include in this book. The book focuses on the model formulation and modeling building skills, as well as the technology to support decision analysis. The authors cover many of the main techniques that have been incorporated into their three-course sequence in mathematical modeling for decision making in the Department of Defense Analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School. The primary objective of this book is illustrative in nature. It begins with an introduction to mathematical modeling and a process for formally thinking about difficult problems, illustrating many scenarios and illustrative examples. The book incorporates the necessary mathematical foundations for solving these problems with military applications and related military processes to reinforce the applied nature of the mathematical modeling process.

This book is a tribute to Professor Pedro Gil, who created the Department of Statistics, OR and TM at the University of Oviedo, and a former President of the Spanish Society of Statistics and OR (SEIO). In more than eighty original contributions, it illustrates the extent to which Mathematics can help manage uncertainty, a factor that is inherent to real life. Today it goes without saying that, in order to model experiments and systems and to analyze related outcomes and data, it is necessary to consider formal ideas and develop scientific approaches and techniques for dealing with uncertainty. Mathematics is crucial in this endeavor, as this book demonstrates. As Professor Pedro Gil highlighted twenty years ago, there are several well-known mathematical branches for this purpose, including Mathematics of chance (Probability and Statistics), Mathematics of communication (Information Theory), and Mathematics of imprecision (Fuzzy Sets Theory and others). These branches often intertwine, since different sources of uncertainty can coexist, and they are not exhaustive. While most of the papers presented here address the three aforementioned fields, some hail from other Mathematical disciplines such as Operations Research; others, in turn, put the spotlight on real-world studies and applications. The intended audience of this book is mainly statisticians, mathematicians and computer scientists, but practitioners in these areas will certainly also find the book a very interesting read.

This book provides a practice-driven, yet rigorous approach to executive management decision-making that performs well even under unpredictable conditions. It explains how executives can employ prescribed engineering design methods to arrive at robust outcomes even when faced with uncontrollable uncertainty. The book presents the paradigm and its main principles in Part I; in Part II it illustrates how to frame a decision situation and how to design the decision so that it will produce its intended behavior. In turn, Part III discusses in detail in situ case studies on executive management decisions. Lastly, Part IV summarizes the book and formulates the key lessons learned.

This book covers a large spectrum of cutting-edge game theory applications in management science in which Professor Georges Zaccour has made significant contributions. The book consists of 21 chapters and highlights the latest treatments of game theory in various areas, including marketing, supply chains, energy and environmental management, and cyber defense. With this book, former Ph.D. students and successful research collaborators of Professor Zaccour wish to honor his many scientific achievements.

This book is the eighth volume in a series entitled "Contemporary Logistics in China," authored by researchers from the Logistics Research Center at Nankai University. In the spirit of the seven preceding annual volumes, this book carries on the ideal of providing a systematic exposition on the logistics development in China for the English-speaking community at large. Specially, this volume captures China's logistics development at a crucial turning point. This present report consists of ten chapters, organized into three sections. The introductory section, consisting of three chapters, depicts the current development status of the logistics market, the logistics facilities and technology, and the regional logistics market. The second section addresses the logistics characteristics of four rapidly expanding industries in China-the third-party logistics, the highway logistics, the express logistics, and the multimodal transport. The final section, consisting of three chapters, discusses some hot logistics topics in China. Chapter 8 studies the capital operation in China's logistics industry. The next chapter deals with the development of intelligent logistics in China. The last chapter of this section presents the development of regional logistics along the Belt and Road routes. As with the previous volumes, the ultimate aim of this book is to present a timely portrait of the rapid growth of China's logistics market and the status quo of its logistics industry. In so doing, the book offers an in-depth analysis of critical issues involved in the ongoing dynamic and multi-faceted development, and provides a valuable reference resource for interested readers in the academic and professional fields.

This book provides an understanding of Business Continuity Management (BCM) implementation for local/international construction operations, with a primary focus on Indonesian construction firms as an illustrative example. It reviews the whole spectrum of work relating to organizational culture (OC) and the institutional framework (IF) as one of the key ways for companies to evaluate and implement BCM in construction operations. Once readers have acquired a sound understanding of BCM, OC and IF linkages in construction firms, the lessons learned can be extended to other companies. This is facilitated through a systematic assessment framework presented in the book using a Knowledge Based Decision Support System (BCM-KBDSS), which allows these companies to evaluate their current status quo with respect to BCM, OC and IF, and then make informed decisions on how and to what extent BCM should be implemented in their operations. As such, the book offers a unique blend of theory and practice, ensuring readers gain a far better understanding of BCM implementation in the construction industry.

This book surveys new algorithmic approaches and applications to natural and man-made disasters such as oil spills, hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires. Based on the "Third International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters" held in Kalamata, Greece, July 2017, this Work includes contributions in evacuation logistics, disaster communications between first responders, disaster relief, and a case study on humanitarian logistics. Multi-disciplinary theories, tools, techniques and methodologies are linked with disasters from mitigation and preparedness to response and recovery. The interdisciplinary approach to problems in economics, optimization, government, management, business, humanities, engineering, medicine, mathematics, computer science, behavioral studies, emergency services, and environmental studies will engage readers from a wide variety of fields and backgrounds.

Developing future strategies for a company is an important and complex task, and forms the core issue in this book. A company's strategy defines its future direction, specifying its desired market position and key competitive advantages both at the level of market offers and of resources. This book provides clear, straightforward advice for professionals: after a brief introduction to strategic planning, a heuristic process for determining future strategies is presented. It shows how to analyze a company's current situation, develop and assess options for the future, and define implementation projects. Throughout the book, detailed recommendations are illustrated with the help of numerous concrete examples. As a result of studying applications of the book in practice, the second edition benefits from a simplified, hands-on analysis and planning process at the business level.

This book presents practical approaches for facilitating the achievement of excellence in the management and leadership of organizational resources. It shows how the principles of creating shared value can be applied to ensure faster learning, training, business development, and social renewal. In particular, it presents novel methods and tools for tackling the complexity of management and learning in both business organizations and society. Discussing ontologies, intelligent management systems, methods for creating knowledge and value added, it offers novel insights into time management and operations optimization, as well as advanced methods for evaluating customers' satisfaction and conscious experience. Based on two conferences, the AHFE 2019 International Conference on Human Factors, Business Management and Society, and the AHFE 2019 International Conference on Human Factors in Management and Leadership, held in July 24-28, 2019, Washington D.C., USA, the book provides both researchers and professionals with new tools and inspiring ideas for achieving excellence in various business activities.

This book provides an overview of the concept of economic psychology from behavioral and mathematical perspectives and related theoretical and empirical findings. Economic psychology is defined briefly as a general term for descriptive theories to explain the psychological processes of microeconomic behaviors and macroeconomic phenomena. However, the psychological methodology and knowledge of economic psychology have also been applied widely in such fields as economics, business administration, and engineering, and they are expected to become increasingly useful in the future-a trend suggested in several eminent scholars' studies. The book explains the numerous behavioral and mathematical models of economic psychology related to micro- and macroeconomic phenomena that have been proposed in the past, and introduces new models that are useful to explain human economic behaviors. It concludes with speculations about the future of modern economic psychology, referring to its connection with fields related to neuroscience, such as neuroeconomics, which have been developed in recent years. Readers require no advanced expertise; nonetheless, an introductory understanding of psychology, business administration, and economics, and a high- school-graduate level of mathematics are useful. To aid readers, each chapter includes a bibliography, which can be referred for more details related to economic psychology.

This book focuses on the most well-regarded and recent nature-inspired algorithms capable of solving optimization problems with multiple objectives. Firstly, it provides preliminaries and essential definitions in multi-objective problems and different paradigms to solve them. It then presents an in-depth explanations of the theory, literature review, and applications of several widely-used algorithms, such as Multi-objective Particle Swarm Optimizer, Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm and Multi-objective GreyWolf Optimizer Due to the simplicity of the techniques and flexibility, readers from any field of study can employ them for solving multi-objective optimization problem. The book provides the source codes for all the proposed algorithms on a dedicated webpage.

This book introduces readers to the use of R codes for optimization problems. First, it provides the necessary background to understand data envelopment analysis (DEA), with a special emphasis on fuzzy DEA. It then describes DEA models, including fuzzy DEA models, and shows how to use them to solve optimization problems with R. Further, it discusses the main advantages of R in optimization problems, and provides R codes based on real-world data sets throughout. Offering a comprehensive review of DEA and fuzzy DEA models and the corresponding R codes, this practice-oriented reference guide is intended for masters and Ph.D. students in various disciplines, as well as practitioners and researchers.

This book explores the challenges that confront leaders in government and industry when making decisions in the areas of environmental health and safety. Today, decision making demands transparency, robustness, and resiliency. However thoughtfully they are devised, decisions made by governments and enterprises can often trigger immediate, passionate public response. Expertise Under Scrutiny shows how leaders can establish organizational decision making processes that yield valid, workable choices even in fast-changing and uncertain conditions. The first part of the book examines the organizational decision making process, describing the often-contentious environment in which important environmental health and safety decisions are made, and received. The authors review the roles of actors and experts in the decision making process. The book goes on to address such topics as: * The roles of actors and experts in the decision making process * Ethics and analytics as drivers of good decisions * Why managing problems in safety, security, environment, and health Part II offers an outline for adopting a formal decision support structure, including the use of decision support tools. It includes a chapter devoted to ELECTRE (ELimination and Choice Expressing Reality), a multi-criteria decision analysis system. The book concludes with an insightful appraisal and analysis of the expertise, structure and resources needed for navigating well-supported, risk-informed decisions in our 21st Century world. Expertise Under Scrutiny benefits a broad audience of students, academics, researchers, and working professionals in management and related disciplines, especially in the field of environmental health and safety.

This proceedings volume presents recent theoretical and practical advances in operational research (OR). The papers focus on a number of key areas including combinatorial optimization, integer programming, heuristics, and mathematical programming. In addition, this volume highlights OR applications in different areas such as financial decision making, marketing, e-business, project management, scheduling, traffic and transportation. The chapters are based on papers presented at the 13th Balkan Conference on Operations Research (BALCOR). BALCOR is an established biennial conference. The selected papers promote international collaboration among researchers and practitioners, with a particular focus on the Balkan countries.

This book focuses on the use of quantitative methods for both business and management, helping readers understand the most relevant quantitative methods for managerial decision-making. Pursuing a highly practical approach, the book reduces the theoretical information to a minimum, so as to give full prominence to the analysis of real business problems. Each chapter includes a brief theoretical explanation, followed by a real-life managerial case that needs to be solved, which is accompanied by a corresponding Microsoft Excel (R) dataset. The practical cases and exercises are solved using Excel, and for each problem, the authors provide an Excel file with the complete solution and corresponding calculations, which can be downloaded easily from the book's website. Further, in an appendix, readers can find solutions to the same problems, but using the R statistical language. The book represents a valuable reference guide for postgraduate, MBA and executive education students, as it offers a hands-on, practical approach to learning quantitative methods in a managerial context. It will also be of interest to managers looking for a practical and straightforward way to learn about quantitative methods and improve their decision-making processes.

This book discusses key issues in the planning and operation of large-scale integrated energy systems (LSIES). It establishes individual-based models for LSIES and develops multi-objective optimization algorithms and multi-attribute decision making support systems, which are applied to the planning and optimal operation of LSIES. It is a valuable reference work for researchers, students and engineers who are interested in energy systems, operation research and decision theory.

This book contains three well-written research tutorials that inform the graduate reader about the forefront of current research in multi-agent optimization. These tutorials cover topics that have not yet found their way in standard books and offer the reader the unique opportunity to be guided by major researchers in the respective fields. Multi-agent optimization, lying at the intersection of classical optimization, game theory, and variational inequality theory, is at the forefront of modern optimization and has recently undergone a dramatic development. It seems timely to provide an overview that describes in detail ongoing research and important trends. This book concentrates on Distributed Optimization over Networks; Differential Variational Inequalities; and Advanced Decomposition Algorithms for Multi-agent Systems. This book will appeal to both mathematicians and mathematically oriented engineers and will be the source of inspiration for PhD students and researchers.

This book contains the proceedings of the Seventh National Conference of the Italian Systems Society. The title, Systemics of Incompleteness and Quasi-Systems, aims to underline the need for Systemics and Systems Science to deal with the concepts of incompleteness and quasiness. Classical models of Systemics are intended to represent comprehensive aspects of phenomena and processes. They consider the phenomena in their temporal and spatial completeness. In these cases, possible incompleteness in the modelling is assumed to have a provisional or practical nature, which is still under study, and because there is no theoretical reason why the modelling cannot be complete. In principle, this is a matter of non-complex phenomena, to be considered using the concepts of the First Systemics. When dealing with emergence, there are phenomena which must be modelled by systems having multiple models, depending on the aspects being taken into consideration. Here, incompleteness in the modelling is intrinsic, theoretically relating changes in properties, structures, and status of system. Rather than consider the same system parametrically changing over time, we consider sequences of systems coherently. We consider contexts and processes for which modelling is incomplete, being related to only some properties, as well as those for which such modelling is theoretically incomplete-as in the case of processes of emergence and for approaches considered by the Second Systemics. In this regard, we consider here the generic concept of quasi explicating such incompleteness. The concept of quasi is used in various disciplines including quasi-crystals, quasi-particles, quasi-electric fields, and quasi-periodicity. In general, the concept of quasiness for systems concerns their continuous structural changes which are always meta-stable, waiting for events to collapse over other configurations and possible forms of stability; whose equivalence depends on the type of phenomenon under study. Interest in the concept of quasiness is not related to its meaning of rough approximation, but because it indicates an incompleteness which is structurally sufficient to accommodate processes of emergence and sustain coherence or generate new, equivalent or non-equivalent, levels. The conference was devoted to identifying, discussing and understanding possible interrelationships of theoretical disciplinary improvements, recognised as having prospective fundamental roles for a new Quasi-Systemics. The latter should be able to deal with problems related to complexity in more general and realistic ways, when a system is not always a system and not always the same system. In this context, the inter-disciplinarity should consist, for instance, of a constructionist, incomplete, non-ideological, multiple, contradiction-tolerant, Systemics, always in progress, and in its turn, emergent.

This textbook provides an introduction to the growing interdisciplinary field of computational science. It combines a foundational development of numerical methods with a variety of illustrative applications spread across numerous areas of science and engineering. The intended audience is the undergraduate who has completed introductory coursework in mathematics and computer science. Students gain computational acuity by authoring their own numerical routines and by practicing with numerical methods as they solve computational models. This education encourages students to learn the importance of answering: How expensive is a calculation, how trustworthy is a calculation, and how might we model a problem to apply a desired numerical method? The text is written in two parts. Part I provides a succinct, one-term inauguration into the primary routines on which a further study of computational science rests. The material is organized so that the transition to computational science from coursework in calculus, differential equations, and linear algebra is natural. Beyond the mathematical and computational content of Part I, students gain proficiency with elemental programming constructs and visualization, which are presented in MATLAB syntax. The focus of Part II is modeling, wherein students build computational models, compute solutions, and report their findings. The models purposely intersect numerous areas of science and engineering to demonstrate the pervasive role played by computational science.

This book opens the door to multiobjective optimization for students in fields such as engineering, management, economics and applied mathematics. It offers a comprehensive introduction to multiobjective optimization, with a primary emphasis on multiobjective linear programming and multiobjective integer/mixed integer programming. A didactic book, it is mainly intended for undergraduate and graduate students, but can also be useful for researchers and practitioners. Further, it is accompanied by an interactive software package - developed by the authors for Windows platforms - which can be used for teaching and decision-making support purposes in multiobjective linear programming problems. Thus, besides the textbook's coverage of the essential concepts, theory and methods, complemented with illustrative examples and exercises, the computational tool enables students to experiment and enhance their technical skills, as well as to capture the essential characteristics of real-world problems.

A seminal collection of research methodology themes, this two-volume work provides a set of key scholarly developments related to robustness, allowing scholars to advance their knowledge of research methods used outside of their own immediate fields. With a focus on emerging methodologies within management, key areas of importance are dissected with chapters covering statistical modelling, new measurements, digital research, biometrics and neuroscience, the philosophy of research, computer modelling approaches and new mathematical theories, among others. A genuinely pioneering contribution to the advancement of research methods in business studies, Innovative Research Methodologies in Management presents an analytical and engaging discussion on each topic. By introducing new research agendas it aims to pave the way for increased application of innovative techniques, allowing the exploration of future research perspectives. Volume II explores a range of research methodologies including the Spatial Delphi and Spatial Shang, Virtual Reality, the Futures Polygon and Neuroscience research.