2011.10.27.abst

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The Development of Specialisation and Division of Labour on Networks

Abstract

Business relations and networks play a central role in the way business and economic systems are organised and function. But their dynamics and evolution have received limited research attention. In order to develop appropriate research-based management and policy advice we need a better understanding of how business relations and networks form and evolve. One way to do this is through the development of agent-based simulation models of business relations and networks that allow researchers to explore systematically the nature and impact of various processes on their structure, behaviour and performance. This presentation focuses on the interplay between the network structure of interactions and the self-organisation of a production and marketing system through processes of specialisation and division of labour. Results are presented of an agent-based model that allows agents to individually increase their productivity with regard to some goods at the cost of decreases in productivity of other goods. Only through coordination of their efforts can they realise these efficiencies of scale to benefit them all. Through simulations we can investigate systematically how the structure of the network of interactions affects the specialisation process.

This project aims to understand core mechanisms of the interaction in business networks and with that provides a basis for developing a generic simulation platform called the Business Network Agent-Based Modelling System (BNAS).