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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Towards an agent-based model using a hybrid conceptual modelling approach
T2 - a case study of relationship conflict within large enterprise system implementations
AU - Williams, Richard
PY - 2022/9/14
Y1 - 2022/9/14
N2 - There is a long history of using modelling and simulation (M&S) to investigate complex systems. With advances in computing power and simulation frameworks, we can now model and simulate increasingly complex systems, in particular socio-technical systems, which has resulted in M&S becoming an essential technique to aid decision-making. An often-overlooked activity within the design and development of computational models for socio-technical systems, is the development of a comprehensive conceptual model defining the scope of the model with respect to actors, technical resources, environment and abstraction level. With specific reference to modelling large IT and IS implementations, this incurs the added challenges of dealing with qualitative information relating to project scope and implementation processes, along with quantitative and qualitative information regarding the social network of the project resources and emergent behaviours that result from interactions between them. Our approach involves a Multi-Paradigm Hybrid Study to develop a Cross-Disciplinary Hybrid Model of relationship conflict within an enterprise system implementation. We identify that Soft Systems Methodology, Social Network Analysis, Unified Modelling Language are complementary approaches from Operational Research, Social Sciences and Software Engineering, that provide a powerful combination of techniques to develop hybrid conceptual models for subsequent encoding into a simplified Agent-Based Model of complex socio-technical systems.
AB - There is a long history of using modelling and simulation (M&S) to investigate complex systems. With advances in computing power and simulation frameworks, we can now model and simulate increasingly complex systems, in particular socio-technical systems, which has resulted in M&S becoming an essential technique to aid decision-making. An often-overlooked activity within the design and development of computational models for socio-technical systems, is the development of a comprehensive conceptual model defining the scope of the model with respect to actors, technical resources, environment and abstraction level. With specific reference to modelling large IT and IS implementations, this incurs the added challenges of dealing with qualitative information relating to project scope and implementation processes, along with quantitative and qualitative information regarding the social network of the project resources and emergent behaviours that result from interactions between them. Our approach involves a Multi-Paradigm Hybrid Study to develop a Cross-Disciplinary Hybrid Model of relationship conflict within an enterprise system implementation. We identify that Soft Systems Methodology, Social Network Analysis, Unified Modelling Language are complementary approaches from Operational Research, Social Sciences and Software Engineering, that provide a powerful combination of techniques to develop hybrid conceptual models for subsequent encoding into a simplified Agent-Based Model of complex socio-technical systems.
KW - Agent-Based Modelling
KW - Hybrid Conceptual Modelling
KW - Relationship Conflict
KW - Social Network Analysis
KW - Soft Systems Methodology
KW - Unified Modelling Language
U2 - 10.1080/17477778.2022.2122741
DO - 10.1080/17477778.2022.2122741
M3 - Journal article
JO - Journal of Simulation
JF - Journal of Simulation
SN - 1747-7778
ER -