Resilience as Anticipation in Organizational Systems: An Agent-based Computational Approach.

The literature on organizational resilience explores various viewpoints, ranging from strategies to recover after disruptions to proactive anticipation of threats. Formal models primarily focus on the ability to recover from shocks, analyzing factors like deviation from performance targets, recovery time, and potential adaptation in function and structure. However, incorporating anticipation into such models remains scarce.

Varying the hydrophobicity of humic matter by a phase-transfer-catalyzed O-alkylation reaction.

An O-alkylation reaction catalyzed by tetrabutylammonium hydroxide (TBAH) as a phase-transfer agent was applied to a humic acid (HA) to modify its hydrophobic properties. The carboxyl and hydroxyl functional groups of HA acted as nucleophiles in substitution reactions (Sn) with methyl iodide, pentyl bromide and benzyl bromide added in amounts equimolar to 20, 60 and 80% of HA total nucleophilic sites. The occurrence of O-alkylation was shown by DRIFT spectrometry, NMR spectroscopy, High Performance Size Exclusion Chromatography (HPSEC) and elemental analysis of reaction products.

Computational Modeling Approaches to OrganizationalChange.

Change is ubiquitous in the study of organizations. Organizational change is characterized by multiple perspectives, both conceptually and methodologically. Computational modeling efforts are not the exception.

The coevolution of the firm and the product attribute space.

Traditionally, firm competition has been studied in contexts where the dimensionality of the product attribute space is given, and firms deploy their strategies constrained by this space. However, firms may exert influence on the local structure of the product attribute space by offering product variants with new attributes. As a result, the geometry of the product attribute space would change endogenously through firms' actions, and this emergent new geometry modifies the conditions for subsequent firm behavior.

The Influence of Homophilous Interactions on Diversity Effects in Group Problem-Solving.

Increasingly diversity researchers call for further studies of group micro-processes and dynamics to understand the paradoxical effects of diversity on group performance. In this study, based on analyses of in-group, networked, homophilous interactions, we aim to explain further the effects of diversity on group performance in a parallel problem-solving task, both experimentally and computationally. We developed a 'whodunit' problem-solving experiment with 116 participants assigned to different-sized groups.

Micro-Level Adaptation, Macro-Level Selection, and the Dynamics of Market Partitioning.

This paper provides a micro-foundation for dual market structure formation through partitioning processes in marketplaces by developing a computational model of interacting economic agents. We propose an agent-based modeling approach, where firms are adaptive and profit-seeking agents entering into and exiting from the market according to their (lack of) profitability. Our firms are characterized by large and small sunk costs, respectively.

Remediation of Hydrocarbon-Contaminated Soil by Washing with Novel Chemically Modified Humic Substances.

In this work, humic (HA) and fulvic acid (FA) were chemically modified by esterification and etherification with alkanes under microwave (MW) irradiation to improve their surfactant properties for the remediation of total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPHs)-contaminated soil. Humic acid and FA were evaluated as surfactant for the remediation of soil by means of washing an aged highly TPH-contaminated soil (50,000 mg TPH kg) sampled from a Mexican petrochemical area. The efficiency of chemical modification of HA and FA was increased and accelerated under MW irradiation with respect to that of conventional heating.