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Qualitative research is a powerful means to capture human interactions and behavior. Although there are different methodologies to develop models based on qualitative research, a methodology is missing that enables to strike a balance between the comparability across cases provided by methodologies that rely on a common and context-independent framework and the flexibility to study any policy problem provided by methodologies that focus on capturing a case study without relying on a common framework. Additionally, a rigorous methodology is missing that enables the development of both theoretical and empirical models for supporting policy formulation and evaluation with respect to a specific policy problem. In this article, the authors propose a methodology targeting these gaps for ABMs in two stages. First, a novel conceptual framework centered on a particular policy problem is developed based on existing theories and qualitative insights from one or more case studies. Second, empirical or theoretical ABMs are developed based on the conceptual framework and generic models. This methodology is illustrated by an example application for disaster information management in Jakarta, resulting in an empirical descriptive agent-based model.

Fast growth of cities decreases the quality of life in these places. In response, Municipalities install policies aiming to improve local livability. While literature suggests social structures to have a defining impact on policy effectiveness, current evaluation metrics are not able to take this into account. This paper presents the Social Neighbourhood model, an agent-based model used to simulate and explore how livability changes in a neighbourhood given various social structures and policies. The model is applied to a neighbourhood in The Hague, Netherlands. The main result of the modelling experiments is that social structures have a very strong influence on whether or not a policy to improve livability is effective. Three hypotheses, concerning this relationship between social structures, livability, and policy interventions are drawn up as a starting point for future research.

Challenges involving economic, environmental, and societal aspects necessitate organisations in business networks to collaborate. The scientific problem central to this paper is the difficulty of building sustainable collaborations. The research question is how to support organisations in building sustainable collaborations in their business relationships. This paper presents a new socio-technical approach to this end, i.e., PDPS (an acronym for Participatory Design of Participatory Systems) and explores its potential in a case study. PDPS is a value-based approach to the participatory design of participatory systems. Such socio-technical systems enable people working in different disciplines, departments, and organisational levels to create sustainable relationships supported by distributed information and communication technology. In a participatory system, participants gain trust, engagement, and empowerment to self-organise actions that produce results they could not have achieved alone. Following PDPS, participants collectively explore challenges in their relationship, define a joint value-based mission, and create a continuous process of self-organisation to fulfil this mission. In a case study, PDPS supported two Dutch business partners in solving recurring transport and logistics issues in retail store refurbishment projects. Turning their traditional business processes into participatory ones led to new solutions for sustainable transport and logistics, more joint business, and more profit. PDPS differs from other approaches in its involvement of all participants in a business relationship, its focus on shared values, and its capacity for creating a continuous process of self-organisation to fulfil a joint mission. This paper may support researchers, practitioners, and organisational policymakers interested in building sustainable collaborations in business networks.

“How does culture, in combination with cues, settings and affiliation, influence response-phase behaviour and time and total evacuation time?”. A questionnaire and an agent-based model for a case study of a library evacuation in Czech Republic, Poland, Turkey and the UK have been developed to answer this question. Our questionnaire, conducted among 442 respondents (N = 105 from Czech Republic, N = 106 from Poland, N = 106 from Turkey and N = 125 from the United Kingdom), shows significant differences in the number of performed response tasks per culture - whereby Turkish respondents perform the most response tasks and British the least - and the results were directly implemented in our agent-based model. Simulation results show: (1) these differences - in combination with emergent effects for task choice and agent interactions - directly translate into the average response and evacuation times being highest for Turkey, followed by Poland, Czech Republic, and the UK, (2) cues, setting and affiliation influence response and evacuation time - such as being informed by staff giving a negative correlation and evacuating in groups a positive correlation with response time -, while the magnitude of these effects differ per culture. Our results suggest that faster response times might be related to dimensions of national culture, such as weak uncertainty avoidance and high individualism.

This paper studies how residents in the neighbourhood Bospolder-Tussendijken (BoTu) have dealt with the COVID-19 restrictions. Prior to the pandemic, significant investments in community-building were made to increase resilience of individuals and communities in BoTu. This paper identifies the key assets BoTu residents had developed and actually during this ultimate challenge. Interviews with formal and informal actors in BoTu revealed that community leadership, engaged governance, problem-solving ability, and information sharing environment were essential to adequately respond to the crisis, and were successfully deployed. The paper concludes with five policy implications to help strengthen capacities and relationships needed for community resilience.

This study investigates whether an agent-based Negotiation Training System (NTS) can teach women Strategic Empathy - a recently introduced negotiation strategy based on perspective taking - and whether this can improve their negotiation performance. Developed and tested through an interaction-based real-time experiment was a NTS that integrated instructions on how to utilize Strategic Empathy. Women in the experimental group showed significantly higher levels of perspective-taking compared to the control group, and their understanding and use of Strategic Empathy increased over time. Also, a significant positive effect was found of Strategic Empathy on women's self-efficacy. No significant positive effect was found of Strategic Empathy on persistence. The high cognitive load of the experiment and a lack of intrinsic motivation may have caused this finding. Overall, this work demonstrates the applicability of using NTS to teach Strategic Empathy, and its effectiveness for enhancing women's self-efficacy in salary negotiations.

COVID-19 has urged researchers to explore new options for distributed participatory design, as physical meetings and workshops became unfeasible. This situation posed new challenges but also opportunities, in particular with respect to engagement and inclusion. This paper focuses on distributed PD with Irish teenagers to support place-making during this period: to build relationships with each other and the community. In a two-week online summer school, teenagers explored a concern or highlighted a unique aspect of their local community and designed digital artworks in response. Activities and materials were designed to support reflection, empowerment, inclusiveness, emergence, and playfulness for participatory place-making. Analysis of the summer school provides insights and guidance on the design of online PD for engaging experiences, especially in the context of place-making.

As higher education digitalises, institutions increasingly outsource the development and management of their digital infrastructure including server hardware and services such as email, shared storage, and video conferencing, to private companies. This outsourcing trend is a change in paradigm, since universities have historically been pioneers in deploying and maintaining their own digital infrastructure, a practice also known as self-hosting. Digital infrastructure has a key role in all of a university’s functions: administration, research, and education. While outsourcing infrastructure has benefits in the form of convenience and lower costs, it also erodes institutional independence, centralises points of failure, and dele- gates highly relevant value choices about privacy, data ownership and environmental impact to external actors. In this article, we provide a first quantification of a potential return to self-hosting, emphasising its effect in energy reduction and avoided e-waste. We then outline some policy actions that could enable higher education institutions to re-take control over their digital infrastructure by building local services. This mode of operation reduces waste, and has the added benefit of increased resilience to scenarios of resource scarcity and collapse of external infrastructure. As an example of what could be achieved leveraging these policies, we detail the architecture of a low-impact data centre made of upcycled hardware and resource-aware software. By exploring our main structural choices we aim to showcase how, even starting from a generally heavy-weight software stack such as Kubernetes, there is significant space to reduce digital infrastructure’s overall resource footprint.

BACKGROUND Electronic Networks of Practice (ENoP) are professional social networks in which professionals share knowledge, advice, and ideas with each other on challenges encountered in practice. Although different aspects of their use have been studied in the past ranging from the motivation of participants to the structure of emerging networks, very little is known about how professionals participate in ENoPs. OBJECTIVE This study proposes a comprehensive and detailed exploratory, conversation-based data analysis methodology to analyse closed, informal, and message-based ENoP participation, and also shows how this methodology can be used to study, develop, and maintain a well-connected and active ENoP. METHODS The proposed methodology includes a number of data analysis methods such as data clustering, social network analysis, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), correlation analysis, content analysis, and conversation analysis. It is applied to a case study for an ENoP in breast cancer treatment for which participation is analysed and guidelines formulated. RESULTS The results show how the methodology can be applied to analyse informal and messages-based ENoP participation including a specific conversation extraction method, a specific social network elements extraction method, and a set of macro and micro measures with which to determine participation. Applying the proposed methodology to a case of an ENoP in breast cancer treatment results in a dataset of 51 extracted conversations in 1000 messages between 100 specialists in breast cancer treatment. The results show the network participation is higher when an active, central and well-known specialist starts a conversation; when feedback is acknowledged; when an initiator or other active, central and well-known specialists are involved in a conversation; and when a conversation does not overlap with another active and ongoing conversation. As another result, 5 dimensions and 5 clusters of conversations are defined and how they relate to ENoP participation. CONCLUSIONS The findings inform the research literature in five ways: (i) how to analyse informal and messages-based ENoP participation; (ii) the role members of ENoP, in particular, central members and admins play to keep a conversation alive; (iii) the way in which professionals engage in conversations; (iv) triggers for more active, engaging, continued user participation; (v) dimensions and attributes of conversations in ENoP and how they relate to ENoP participation. The methodology and guidelines together provide ENoP researchers, developers, admins, and expert members a means with which to study, develop, and maintain a well-connected and active ENoP.

Knowledge management is a critical issue in today's business world. Knowledge is considered to be one of the most strategic resources of a firm and sources of competitive advantage. This paper identifies and ranks Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for implementation of knowledge management in the Iranian Energy Sector. Using the Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method the relative quantitative weights of 8 of the major CSFs for implementation of knowledge management are identified, based on analyses with KM designers in the Iranian energy sector. The outcomes of the research designate that the critical success factors in the order of importance are: corporate culture, human and financial resources, strategy and leadership, structures and procedures, meso environmental factors, knowledge management process, macro environmental factors, technology and infrastructure.

A cooperation model based on joint intentions introduced by Jennings is formalised within the modelling framework DESIRE for compositional multi-agent systems. By formalising the model in the DESIRE framework operationalisation and reusability of the model are obtained, as DESIRE specifications are executable and easily reusable.

The recent trend towards increased utilization of green energy sources promises a future of sustainable energy. However, green sources are typically intermittent and unpredictable (e.g. wind power), which leads to increased complexity and, ultimately, decreased efficiency. For example, it is estimated that 90% of the full energy potential of an average wind farm never reaches the end consumer due to poor coordination with consumers (Piwko et al., 2005). To enable better coordination, an energy market using short-term “micro” agreements is required to allow consumers to react in real time to changes in production. This will increase efficient utilization of green sources and reduce energy costs for the consumer. The current market framework cannot adapt quickly to changes due to the constraints of static leases and fixed prices. This means that green energy supply cannot always find green energy demand and vice versa, resulting in low market efficiency. This chapter describes a dynamic market with micro agreements that enables consumers to react to changes in green production.