This article describes the dynamics and impacts of local territorial networks' on the base of the articulation of some examples of varieties of well known pathologies in social systems adjusted to the peculiarities of these local networks. The potential capability of these pathologies to create profound effects in inhibiting link formation, to turn positive links into ineffective or negative ones and to enhance the non-linear system behaviour and results, deeply influences the quality of interactions among network agents. The possibility of providing a correct diagnosis of these network pathologies could provide useful contributions to alerting about actual and potential possibilities of their occurring and in preventing a system collapse caused by a deterioration in the link value and in the eventual link losses.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Albert, R. and A.L. Barabasi . 2000. ‘ Topology of Evolving Networks: Local Events and Universality ’, Physical Review Letters, 85: 5234–37 .
2.
Albert, R. and A.L. Barabasi . 2002. ‘ Statistical Mechanics of Complex Networks ’, Reviews of Modern Physics, 74: 47–97 .
3.
Albert R. , H. Jeong and A.L. Barabasi . 2000. ‘ Attack and Error Tolerance of Complex Networks ’, Nature, 406: 378–82 .
4.
Antonelli, C.2003. The Economics of Innovation, New Technologies and Structural Change. London: Routledge .
5.
Arthur, B.1990. ‘ Positive Feedbacks in the Economy ’, Scientific American. February.
6.
Bachmann, R.2001. ‘ Trust, Power and Control in Trans-Organizational Relations ’, Organization Studies22(2): 337–65 .
7.
Barabasi, A.L.2002. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus .
8.
Barabasi, A.L. , H. Jeong , E. Ravasz , Z. Neda , A. Schuberts and T. Vicsek . 2002. ‘ Evolution of the Social Network of Scientific Collaborations ’, Physica A, 311: 590–614 .
9.
Barrat, A. and M. Weigt . 2000. ‘ On the Properties of Small-world Networks ’, European Physical Journal B, 13: 547–60 .
10.
Beer, A. , G. Haughton and A. Maude . 2003. Developing Locally: An International Comparison of Local and Regional Economic Development. Bristol, UK: The Policy Press .
11.
Bianconi, G. and A.L. Barabasi . 2001. ‘ Competition and Multiscaling in Evolving Networks ’, Europhysics Letters, 54: 436–42 .
12.
Bloise, G. , S. Currarini and N. Kikidis . 2002. ‘ Inflation, Welfare, and Public Goods ’, Journal of Public Economic Theory, 4(3): 369–86 .
13.
Bollobàs, B.1998. Modern Graph Theory. New York: Springer .
14.
Bollobàs, B.2001. Random Graphs. New York: Academic Press .
15.
Bouchaud, J.P. and M. Potters . 2000. Theory of Financial Risks. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
16.
Boudon, R.1981. Effetti Perversi dell'Azione Sociale (Perverse Effects of Social Action). Milan: Feltrinelli .
17.
Braun, A.R. , G. Thiele and M. Fernández . 2000. Farmer Field Schools and Local Agricultural Research Committees: Complementary Platforms for Integrated Decision-making in Sustainable Agriculture. London: Overseas Development Institute, Agricultural Research & Extension , Network Paper No. 105, p. 16.
18.
Burt, R.S.1987. ‘ Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion versus Structural Equivalence ’, American Journal of Sociology, 92: 1287–1335 .
19.
Callaway, D.S. , M.E.J. Newman , S.H. Strogatz and D.J. Watts . 2000. ‘ Network Robustness and Fragility: Percolation on Random Graphs ’, Physical Review Letters, 85: 5468–71 .
20.
Cannarella, C. and V. Piccioni . 2005a. ‘ Knowledge Building in Rural Areas: Experiences from a Research Centre-rural SME Scientific Partnership in Central Italy ’, International Journal of Rural Management, 1(1): 25–43 .
21.
Cannarella, C. and V. Piccioni . 2005b. ‘ Public Organizations and Local Rural Development; An Empirical Analysis ’, Electronic Journal of Business Ethics and Organization Studies, 10(2): 16–23 .
22.
Champsaur, P.I. , D. Roberts and R. Rosenthal . 1975. ‘ On Cores of Economies with Public Goods ’, International Economic Review, 16: 751–64 .
23.
Clegg, S.R. , M. Kornberger and C. Rhodes . 2005. ‘ Learning/Becoming/Organizing ’ in Organization, 12 (2): 147–67 .
24.
Corkill, D. and S. Lander . 1998. ‘ Diversity in Agent Organizations ’, Object Magazine, 8 (4): 41–47 .
25.
Cross, J. , and M. Guyer . 1980. Social Traps. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press .
26.
Curran, J.1994. Small Firms and Local Economic Networks. London: Sage Publications .
27.
Daft, R.2001. Organization Theory and Design. Ohio: South Western .
28.
Degenne, A.1999. Introducing Social Network. London: Sage Publications .
29.
Dorogovtsev S.N. and J.F.F. Mendes . 2000. ‘ Scaling Behaviour of Developing and Decaying Networks ’, Europhysics Letters, 52: 33–39 .
30.
Dorogovtsev S.N. and J.F.F. Mendes . 2002. ‘ Evolution of Networks ’, Advances in Physics, 51: 1079–187 .
31.
Edwards, W.M. and T.R. Eggers . 2004. ‘ Agricultural Management e-School: Extension Education over the Internet ’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 86 (3): 778–81 .
32.
Etcheson, C.1989. Arms Race Theory: Strategy and Structure of Behavior. New York: Greenwood .
Geels, F.W.2004. ‘ From Sectoral Systems of Innovation to Socio-technical Systems: Insights about Dynamics and Change from Sociology and Institutional Theory ’, Research Policy, 33 (6–7): 897–920 .
35.
Glance, N. and B. Huberman . 1994. ‘ The Dynamics of Social Dilemmas ’, Scientific American, March: 76–81 .
36.
Glance, N. and T. Hogg . 1995. ‘Dilemmas in Computational Societies’, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS-95), pp. 117–24. Menlo Park, California: AAAI Press .
37.
Gleditsch, N. and O. Njolstad . (eds). 1990. Arms Races: Technological and Political Dynamics. London: Sage Publications .
38.
Goh, K.I. , E. Oh , H. Jeong , B. Kahng and D. Kim . 2002. ‘ Classification of Scale-free Networks ’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99 (20): 12583–88 .
39.
Greve, H.R.2005. ‘ Interorganizational Learning and Heterogeneous Social Structure ’, Organization Studies, 26: 1025–47 .
40.
Hall, R.1968. ‘ Professionalization and Bureaucratization ’, American Sociological Review, 33: 92–104 .
41.
Hall, A. , N. Clark , S. Taylor and V.R. Sulaiman . 2001. ‘Institutional Learning through Technical Projects: Horticulture Technology R&D Systems in India’. London, Overseas Development Institute, Agricultural Research & Extension Network Paper No. 111, p. 12 .
42.
Hardin, G.1968. ‘ The Tragedy of the Commons ’, Science, 162: 1243–48 .
43.
Hauser, J. , G. Urban and B. Weinberg . 1993. ‘ How Consumers Allocate their Time when Searching for Information ’, Journal of Marketing Research, 30: 452–66 .
44.
Herlocker, J.L. , J.A. Konstan , L.G. Terveen and J.T. Riedl . 2004. ‘ Evaluating Collaborative Filtering Recommender Systems ’. ACM TOIS, 22 (1): 5–53 .
45.
Herr, P. , F. Kardes and J. Kim . 1991. ‘ Effects of Word-of-mouth and Product-attribute Information on Persuasion: An Accessibility-diagnosticity Perspective ’, Journal of Consumer Research, 17: 454–62 .
46.
Holt, K.2002. Market Oriented Product Innovation. A Key to Survival in the Third Millennium, Kluwer .
47.
Jain, S. and S. Krishna . 2001. ‘ A Model for the Emergence of Cooperation, Interdependence, and Structure in Evolving Networks ’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98: 543–47 .
48.
Jensen, D. and V. Lesser . 2002. ‘Social Pathologies of Adaptive Agents’, in M. Barley and H. Guesgen (eds), Symposium vol. IR SS-02-07. Safe Learning Agents: Papers from the 2002 AAAI Spring. California: AAAI Press .
49.
Jensen, D. and P. Cohen . 2001. ‘ Multiple Comparisons in Induction Algorithms ’, Machine Learning, 38 (3): 309–38 .
50.
Jeong, H. , Z. Neda and A.L. Barabasi . 2003. ‘ Measuring Preferential Attachment in Evolving Networks ’, Europhysics Letters, 61: 567–72 .
51.
Kaindl, H.1988. ‘ Minimaxing: Theory and Practice ’, AI Magazine, 9 (3): 69–76 .
Kilduf, M.2003. Social Networks and Organizations, London: Sage Publications .
54.
Leeuwis, C. and A.W. Van den Ban . 2004. Communication for Rural Innovation: Rethinking Agricultural Extension. Oxford: Blackwell .
55.
Lundstedt, S.B. and T.H. Moss . 1989. Managing Innovation and Change. Dordrecht: Kluwer .
56.
Mantengna, R. and E. Stanley . 2000. Econophysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
57.
Marquis, M. and P. Filiatrault . 2002. ‘ Understanding Complaining Responses through Consumers' Self-consciousness Disposition ’, Psychology & Marketing, 19 (3): 267–92 .
58.
Marsden, P.V.1990. ‘ Network Data and Measurement ’, Annual Review of Sociology, 16: 435–63 .
59.
McAdam, R.2004. ‘ Knowledge Creation and Idea Generation: A Critical Quality Perspective ’, Technovation, 24 (9): 697–705 .
60.
Milleron, J.C.1972. ‘ Theory of Value with Public Goods: A Survey Article ’, Journal of Economic Theory, 5: 419–77 .
61.
Monasson, R.1999. ‘ Diffusion, Localization and Dispersion Relations on “Small-world” Lattices ’, European Physical Journal B, 12: 555–67 .
62.
Nau, D.1983. ‘ Pathology on Game Trees Revisited, and an Alternative to Minimaxing ’, Artificial Intelligence, 21: 221–44 .
63.
Newman, M.2003. ‘ The Structure and Function of Complex Networks ’, SIAM Review, 45: 167 .
64.
Numaoka, C.1995. ‘Introducing the Blind Hunger Dilemma: Agents' Properties and Performance’, in Victor Lesser (ed.), Proceedings of the First International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (ICMAS-95) pp. 290–96. California: AAAI Press .
65.
Oates, T. and D. Jensen . 1997. ‘The Effects of Training Set Size on Tree Size’, in Douglas Fisher (ed.), Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on Machine Learning, pp. 254–62. San Mateo, CA: Morgan Kaufmann .
66.
Ottosson, S. and E. Björk . 2004. ‘ Research on Dynamic Systems—Some Considerations ’, Technovation, 24 (11): 863–69 .
67.
Proykova, A. and D. Staufer . 2002. ‘ Social Percolation and the Influence of Mass Media ’, Physica A, 312: 300–04 .
68.
Reese, L.1997. Local Economic Development Policy: The United States and Canada. New York: Garland Publishing .
69.
Rege, M.2004. ‘ Social Norms and Private Provision of Public Goods ’, Journal of Public Economic Theory, 6 (1): 65–77 .
70.
Rogers, E.M.1979. ‘Network Analysis of the Diffusion of Innovations’, in P.W. Holland and S. Leinhardt (eds), Perspectives on Social Network Research, pp. 137–64. New York: Academic Press .
71.
Romney, A.K.1989. ‘ Quantitative Models, Science and Cumulative Knowledge ’, Journal of Quantitative Anthropology, 1: 153–223 .
72.
Scott, J.2000. Social Network Analysis. London: Sage Publications .
73.
Sigmund, K. , E. Fehr and M. Nowak . 2002. ‘ The Economics of Fair Play ’, Scientific American, January: 83–87 .
74.
Smallbone, D. and F. Lyon . 2002. ‘A Note on Trust, Networks, Social Capital and Entrepreneurial Behaviour’, H.H. Höhmann and F. Welter (eds), Entrepreneurial Strategies and Trust: Structure and Evolution of Entrepreneurial Behavioural Patterns in East and West European Environments—Concepts and Considerations. Forschungsstelle Osteuropa Bremen, Arbeitspapiere und Materialien, 37, Bremen .
75.
Solomon, S. , G. Weisbuch , L. de Arcangelis , N. Jan and D. Staufer . 2000. ‘ Social Percolation Models ’, Physica A, 277: 230–47 .
76.
Sugawara, T. and V. Lesser . 1998. ‘ Learning to Improve Coordinated Actions in Cooperative Distributed Problem-solving Environments ’, Machine Learning, 33: 129–53 .
77.
Thomson, W.1999. ‘ Economies with Public Goods: An Elementary Geometric Exposition ’, Journal of Public Economic Theory, 1: 139–76 .
78.
Townley, B. , D. Cooper and L. Oakes . 2003. ‘ Performance Measures and the Rationalization of Organizations ’, Organization Studies, September (24): 1045–71 .
79.
Turner, R.1993. ‘The Tragedy of the Commons and Distributed AI Systems’, Twelfth International Workshop on Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Hidden Valley, PA: 379–90 .
80.
Vazquez, A.2003. Growing Networks with Local Rules: Preferential Attachment, Clustering Hierarchy and Degree Correlations ’, Physics Review, 67.
81.
Von Zedtwitz, M. , G. Haour , T. Khalil and L.A. Lefebvre (eds). 2003. Management of Technology: Growth Through Business Innovation and Entrepreneurship. London: Pergamon .
82.
Walton, E.J.2005. ‘ The Persistence of Bureaucracy: A Meta-analysis of Weber's Model of Bureaucratic Control ’, Organization Studies, 26: 569–600 .
83.
Wasserman, S. and K. Faust . 1994. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
84.
Watts, D.J. , P.S. Dodds and M.E.J. Newman . 2002. ‘ Identity and Search in Social Networks ’, Science, 296: 1302–05 .
85.
Wellman, M.1993. ‘ A Market-oriented Programming Environment and its Application to Distributed Multicommodity Flow Problems ’, Journal of AI Research, 1: 1–23 .
