Using agents to make and manage markets across a supply web

Perspective: Complexity Theory and Organization Science

“…Classifier systems have been used to manage bidding processes across a supply chain (Roy 1998). By allowing rules to bid and compete with one another, these models are able to evolve adequate solutions to problems involving very complex nonlinear dynamics.…”

Managing without Leadership: Towards a Theory of Organizational Functioning20105Gabriele Lakomski. Managing without Leadership: Towards a Theory of Organizational Functioning. Sydney: Elsevier 2005. 159 pp. US$122.95, ISBN: 0‐08‐043352‐9

“…We seem to be doing this by trial and error, possibly guided, or hindered, by our assumptions of "what goes with what" to create a better outcome or product. But somehow we seem to be doing it, as told in the story of Boeing's problems in managing the sharp increase in the production rate of some of its aircraft (Roy, 1998). Boeing's supply problems were solved by replacing centrally controlled supply chains with a distributed, self-organizing local one that in fact acted like a market.…”

A History of Network and Channels Thinking in Marketing in the 20Th Century

“…In addition, the methods are being taken up by business as they seek improved ways of understanding and controlling the complex business networks of which they are a part (e.g. Axelrod and Cohen 1999, Ernst and Young 1998, Roy 1998.…”