New Dimensions in Networks series – serie

The advent of the Information Age has transformed the ways in which individuals work, travel, and conduct their daily activity. Anna Nagurney and June Dong lay out the theory of supernetworks, networks that exist over and above existing electronic networks, in order to formalize decision-making in the Information Age. Supernetworks are conceptual in scope, graphical in perspective, and, with the accompanying theory, predictive in nature. In this book, the authors provide a unifying framework for the study of decision-making by a variety of economic agents including consumers and producers as well as distinct intermediaries in the context of today's networked economy. They provide the conceptual, analytical, and computational tools for the study of supernetworks. Their approach is rigorous and of sufficient generality and detail to give added insight into the behavior and structure of large-scale, interacting and competitive network systems, such as transportation, telecommunication, and financial networks. Areas studied include: supply chain networks with electronic commerce, financial networks with intermediation, telecommunicating versus commuting decision-making, teleshopping versus shopping decision-making, as well as transportation and location decisions. Case studies drawn from practice are provided for illustration purposes. Academics and practitioners in economics, business, and operations research along with management scientists, transportation and logistics researchers, computer scientists and applied mathematicians will find this book fascinating and useful.

This book examines the resurgence of good organization as a key competitive factor that was witnessed by firms in the 1990s. The author argues that to be competitive during this period, it was no longer sufficient to have a well-structured strategic plan, and that excessive hierarchy had to be removed. Traditional as well as high-tech companies were forced to evolve, and, the book asserts, the first lessons from these changes can now be drawn.Emmanuel Josserand argues that evolving industrial activity demands a more customized service, and to accomplish this, all sectors are moving towards networked organization, i.e. capable of flexibility and learning, with a capacity for change and problem solving through a process of self-organization, self-coordination and interconnectedness. The conclusion is that although the development of a network organization can be difficult, putting in place these mechanisms is, on balance, a positive move. The author goes on to state that in light of the acceleration of information and communication technology, companies should be capable of adapting themselves quickly, and that the network has thus become the inevitable way forward. The book calls upon experiences of four leading companies who adopted a management style in which decentralization and crosscutting relationships were essential to illustrate this.Highlighting pitfalls for practitioners to avoid, and examining the advantages and difficulties encountered, this book will appeal to researchers, academics and managers with a special interest in the network organization.

This book offers a comprehensive analysis of dynamic networks and evolutionary variational inequalities, a topic of growing prominence in the study of networks. The extraordinary importance of networks in finance, mathematics, computer science and other areas is well known but the relatively new concept of 'dynamic' networks is less well understood. They become dynamic when the constitutive elements of the phenomena associated with the fixed geometry of networks are considered to be evolving over time. Patrizia Daniele offers many numerical examples to illustrate the issues discussed and provides a broad appendix to enrich this challenging but deeply informative book.Researchers, students and practitioners in the areas of finance, economics, computer science, and mathematics will find this volume an indispensable resource in understanding the use and development of networks in their disciplines.

This book is the first to bring an economics perspective in a rigorous manner to complex decision-making in the management of supply chains. It provides the foundations for the modeling of the interrelationships among decision-makers in supply chains, ranging from manufacturers, distributors, and retailers, to the consumers, assuming individualized behavior. The models handle both competition and cooperation and provide the resulting product flows and prices in the chains. A unique network economics perspective is brought to the issue, setting the book apart from the numerous management and operations research volumes available. After an introduction of the theoretical foundations, the book extends and applies the theory to energy supply chains in the form of electric power generation and distribution networks. The relationships between electric power supply chains and transportation networks are vividly captured through theoretical results and the solution of practical examples. The book then explores environmental supply chain and financial networks with intermediation, which are interpreted as supply chains and also solved as such. Throughout, the underlying theme is that of transportation networks and how the relationships between supply chain networks and the more established theory of transportation network equilibria can be applied and exploited for logistic-type applications. Economists and transportation researchers will find the book's theory and applications of great interest. Operations researchers and management scientists as well as practitioners in business logistics will be interested in the book's methodological and practical tools.