QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

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Stefan Gröser Web
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QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

Post by Stefan Gröser Web »

Posted by Stefan Gröser Web <stefan.groesser@web.de> Dear colleagues,

I am working in a research project at the University of Berne which tries to understand the diffusion process in the building environment. (For references, see www.deeb.ch <http://www.deeb.ch/> )

Connected to this I would like to ask the members of this listserver if you know about any System Dynamics Model that captures the phenomenon of “norm formation” in a society. In other words, the establishment of a standard or a convention.

Of course, there is the Polya-process (Sterman 2000) and the famous application in the VHS vs- Betamax case.

But know anybody about a model that tried to capture the over time development of societal norms?

I welcome any hints and of course, also hints about non-SD related literature about the topic.

Thanks for your time.

Best personal regards,

Stefan Groesser

Research Associate, University of Berne, Switzerland Master of Science in Management (Dipl.-Kfm. techn.)

Tel.: +41 (0)79 295 42 70
Email: stefan.groesser@ikaoe.unibe.ch
___________________________________________________________
University of Berne
Interfacultary Center for General Ecology (IKAOE) Chair of Prof. Dr. Ruth Kaufmann-Hayoz Postbox 8573 3000 Berne <http://www.ikaoe.unibe.ch/> www.ikaoe.unibe.ch



Stefan Groesser

Teaching Assistant, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
Master of Science in Management (Dipl.-Kfm. techn.)
Posted by Stefan Gröser Web <stefan.groesser@web.de>
posting date Sun, 10 Dec 2006 13:22:44 +0100
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Bent Erik Bakken
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QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

Post by Bent Erik Bakken »

Posted by Bent Erik Bakken <beerikba@online.no> Dear Stefan,

I wrote a paper, published in the proceedings of the ""'ISDC '87 Shanghai Conference"" called ""A System Dynamics Model of Group Formation and Productivity"". I cannot find my electronic copy. The proceedings should be available many places.

The paper uses a classic group formation book by ""The Human Group"" by Homans (1950) and builds a formal model to represent it.

Regards

Bent Erik

PS. I am still contemplating the Prague EURO conference in Jul 07.
Posted by Bent Erik Bakken <beerikba@online.no> posting date Mon, 11 Dec 2006 13:39:40 +0100 (CET) _______________________________________________
""Tobias Lorenz""
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QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

Post by ""Tobias Lorenz"" »

Posted by ""Tobias Lorenz"" <space56@freenet.de> Hey Stefan,

I know one source that might be useful for you. It's a professor called Rainer Hegselmann, teaching in Bayreuth. He is working on something called opinion dynamics, but with Agent-based modelling. I don't know the specifc articles by him, but you can find out about him by googeling Hegselmann...

Best regards
Tobi
Posted by ""Tobias Lorenz"" <space56@freenet.de> posting date Mon, 11 Dec 2006 14:31:41 +0100 _______________________________________________
""Chawla, Chander""
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QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

Post by ""Chawla, Chander"" »

Posted by ""Chawla, Chander"" <Chander.Chawla@T-Mobile.com> Stefan,

The best book on the subject is ""Diffusion of Innovations"" by Everett Rogers.
It does not have quantitative modeling but will give you an excellent understanding of how some innovations get adopted and become norms in the society (system) and why others don't get adopted. To get a preview of what is in the book, may want to read the following blog post.

http://cdoq.blogspot.com/2006/11/human- ... t-new.html

Hope this helps.

Cordially,

Chander Chawla
Posted by ""Chawla, Chander"" <Chander.Chawla@T-Mobile.com> posting date Mon, 11 Dec 2006 10:12:56 -0800 _______________________________________________
""Bahadir K. AKCAM""
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QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

Post by ""Bahadir K. AKCAM"" »

Posted by ""Bahadir K. AKCAM"" <bahadirakcam2000@yahoo.com> Dear Stefan,

I am glad you brought this topic to the list. David Andersen, Tony Cresswell
and I are also working on socio-technical processes of the World Trade Center
Case. We are modeling and simulating the social accumulations occurred during
the processing of artifacts. The main idea is based on Luis Luna-Reyes etal.'s
(2004) article describing a generic theory of interorganizational collaboration.

I believe you can model the process of norm formation in the same way.

This topic will become my dissertation, let's keep in touch.

Here is our paper published at the last system dynamics conference, check the
Figure 4 for the main idea.

Akcam, B.A., Cresswell, A.M., Andersen, D.F. (2006) ""Testing A Generic Dynamic
Theory of Collaboration in The World Trade Center Case"" presented at the International
Conference of the System Dynamics Society, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
http://www.albany.edu/~ba145531/Akcam_C ... n_2006.pdf

This is Luna-Reyes et al's article

Luna-Reyes, L.F., Mojtahedzadeh, M., Andersen D.F., Richardson, G.P., Pardo, T.A., Burke, B., Wu, Yi-jung, Cresswell A.M., Bodor, T., Canestraro, D., Dawes, S., Demircivi, F., Schneider C., Thompson, F., (2004) “Emergence of the Governance Structure for Information Integration across Governmental Agencies:
A System Dynamics Approach” presented at the International Conference of the System Dynamics Society, Oxford, England
http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferenc ... 82LUNA.pdf

Take care,

Bahadir K. Akcam, MSc, PMP
Center for Technology in Government
& Information Science PhD Program
University at Albany, SUNY
Posted by ""Bahadir K. AKCAM"" <bahadirakcam2000@yahoo.com> posting date Tue, 12 Dec 2006 07:12:49 -0800 (PST) _______________________________________________
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QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

Post by »

Posted by <rgd6@cornell.edu>
Stefan:

When you say societal norms I assume that you're talking about accepted behavioral norms within a society, not the adoption of a particular technology -- like a keyboard design.

I looked into this issue a bit in my paper presented at the 2004 meeting:
The dynamic structure of social capital: how interpersonal connections create communitywide benefits.

This paper looked at the concept of social capital, but that concept draws in part on the establishment of societal norms. In this case these are norms of behavior of people in relation to one another, especially in relation to collective action -- either in a general sense or directed at a particular issue. Some of the references cited in the paper might be of interest.

The paper is on my website http://pws.prserv.net/RGDudley/ Richard

_____________________
Richard G. Dudley
Bogor, Indonesia / Portland, Oregon, USA Posted by <rgd6@cornell.edu> posting date Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:22:52 -0800 _______________________________________________
""Peter Hovmand""
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QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

Post by ""Peter Hovmand"" »

Posted by ""Peter Hovmand"" <phovmand@wustl.edu> Dear Stefan,

You might want to check out some of Samuel Jacaobsen's work in sociology since he was looking at social norms, organizational change, and using system dynamics as a simulation tool to developing sociological theories:

Samuel, Y., & Jacobsen, C. (1997). A system dynamics model of planned organizational change. Computational and mathematical organization theory, 3(3), 151-171.

Jacobsen, C. (1999), The process of crescive legitimation: theory, simulation model, and three empirical tests, Adaptive Behavior 7(3-4), 255-267.

Jacobsen, C. and Bronson, R. (1985), Simulating Violators, Baltimore, MD, Operations Research Society of America (ORSA).

Jacobsen, C. and Bronson, R. (1989), Thank you for NOT smoking: Simulating the growth of a new social norm, in C. Jackson, P. Keys and S.A. Cropper (eds.), Operational Research and the Social Sciences, Plenum, London, 531--536.

Jacobsen, C., & Bronson, R. (1987). Defining sociological concepts as variables for system dynamics modeling. System Dynamics Review, 3(1), 1-7.

Jacobsen, C. Bronson, R. and Vekstein, D. (1990), A strategy for testing the empirical adequacy of macro-sociological theories, Journal of Mathematical Sociology 15 (2), 137--148.

Jacobsen, C. and Bronson, R. (1995), Computer simulation and empirical testing of sociological theory, Sociological Methods and Research 23 (4), 479--506.

Jacobsen, C. (1997), Patterned deviance. Chapter 14, pp. 27-42 in Robert Friedmann (ed.), Criminal Justice and Criminology in Israel, Albany, NY.: SUNY Press.


Peter S. Hovmand, MSW, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
George Warren Brown School of Social Work
Washington University in St. Louis
Campus Box 1196
1 Brookings Drive
St. Louis, MO 63130
Posted by ""Peter Hovmand"" <phovmand@wustl.edu>
posting date Tue, 12 Dec 2006 08:36:10 -0600
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""Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano"" <
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QUERY Formation of Societal Norms

Post by ""Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano"" < »

Posted by ""Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano"" <imartinez@albany.edu> Stefan,

Norm formation is a very interesting research area. My Ph.D. dissertation, ""Rule Dynamics: Toward a Theory of Rule Change in Organizations,"" builds on and extends work by James March and others on the determinants of change in rule systems. The theory behind the models that I developed includes elements from the economics, management, sociology, and operations management literatures. In my investigation I found that 'rules' and 'norms' have a lot in common and are used by many as synonyms in different strands of literature. In the sociology literature is where you can find a more consistent use of the norm construct. Rule change seems to be related not only to diffusion processes but also to processes related to the identification and rationalization of options; it has a lot to do with attention, perception, memory, and learning.

Please let me know if I can be of help.

Best,

Nacho

-- Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano, Ph.D.
Decision and Information Sciences
Argonne National Laboratory
9700 South Cass Avenue, Bldg. 900
Argonne, IL 60439
Posted by ""Ignacio J. Martinez-Moyano"" <imartinez@albany.edu> posting date Thu, 14 Dec 2006 01:24:25 -0600 (CST) _______________________________________________
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