Introduction/ Objectives: Stroke, the third leading cause of death in Canada, is projected to rise in the next 20 years as the population ages and obesity rates increase. Family caregivers fulfill pertinent roles in providing support for family members who have survived a stroke, from onset to re-integration into the community. However, the transition from rehabilitation to home is a crucial transition for both the stroke survivor and family caregiver. As the stroke survivor transitions home from a rehabilitation facility, family caregivers provide different types of support, including assistance with navigating the stroke rehabilitation system. They also are a constant source of support for the stroke survivor providing them with continuity during the transition. In this exploratory study we examined family caregivers’ perceptions and experiences navigating the stroke rehabilitation system. The theories of continuity care and complex adaptive systems were used to examine the transition home from hospital or stroke rehabilitation facility, and in some cases back to hospital. Methodology: Family caregivers (n=14) who provide care for a stroke survivor were recruited 4-12 weeks following the patient’s discharge from a stroke rehabilitation facility. Interviews were conducted with family caregivers to examine their perceptions and experiences navigating the stroke rehabilitation system. Directed content analysis was used to explore the perceptions of family caregivers as they reflected on the transitions home. The theories of continuity of care and complex adaptive systems were used to interpret their experiences. Results/Conclusions: During the transition home from a rehabilitation facility, family caregivers are a constant source of support, providing the stroke survivor with continuity. Emergent themes highlight the importance of the caregiving role, and barriers and facilitators that impact the role, and influence continuity of care. Also, supports and services in the community were limited or did not meet the specific needs of the family caregiver. The acknowledgment of the unique attributes of each case will ensure supports and services are tailored to the family caregiver’s needs. Mitigation of systemic barriers would also decrease complexity experienced at the micro-level in the stroke rehabilitation system, and better support the family caregiver during the transition home from a stroke rehabilitation facility.

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Parallel programming presents an efficient solution to exploit future multicore processors. Unfortunately, traditional programming models depend on programmer’s skills for synchronizing concurrent threads, which makes the development of parallel software a hard and errorprone task. In addition to this, current synchronization techniques serialize the execution of those critical sections that conflict in shared memory and thus limit the scalability of multithreaded applications. Transactional Memory (TM) has emerged as a promising programming model that solves the trade-off between high performance and ease of use. In TM, the system is in charge of scheduling transactions (atomic blocks of instructions) and guaranteeing that they are executed in isolation, which simplifies writing parallel code and, at the same time, enables high concurrency when atomic regions access different data. Among all forms of TM environments, Hardware TM (HTM) systems is the only one that offers fast execution at the cost of adding dedicated logic in the processor. Existing HTMsystems suffer considerable delays when they execute complex transactional workloads, especially when they deal with large and contending transactions because they lack adaptability. Furthermore, most HTM implementations are ad hoc and require cumbersome hardware structures to be effective, which complicates the feasibility of the design. This thesis makes several contributions in the design and analysis of low-cost HTMsystems that yield good performance for any kind of TM program. Our first contribution, FASTM, introduces a novel mechanism to elegantly manage speculative (and already validated) versions of transactional data by slightly modifying on-chip memory engine. This approach permits fast recovery when a transaction that fits in private caches is discarded. At the same time, it keeps non-speculative values in software, which allows in-place x memory updates. Thus, FASTM is not hurt from capacity issues nor slows down when it has to undo transactional modifications. Our second contribution includes two different HTM systems that integrate deferred resolution of conflicts in a conventional multicore processor, which reduces the complexity of the system with respect to previous proposals. The first one, FUSETM, combines different-mode transactions under a unified infrastructure to gracefully handle resource overflow. As a result, FUSETM brings fast transactional computation without requiring additional hardware nor extra communication at the end of speculative execution. The second one, SPECTM, introduces a two-level data versioning mechanism to resolve conflicts in a speculative fashion even in the case of overflow. Our third and last contribution presents a couple of truly flexible HTM systems that can dynamically adapt their underlying mechanisms according to the characteristics of the program. DYNTM records statistics of previously executed transactions to select the best-suited strategy each time a new instance of a transaction starts. SWAPTM takes a different approach: it tracks information of the current transactional instance to change its priority level at runtime. Both alternatives obtain great performance over existing proposals that employ fixed transactional policies, especially in applications with phase changes.

Managing the information flow within a big organization is a challenging task. Moreover, in a distributed decision-making process conflicting objectives occur. In this paper, artificial adaptive agents are used to analyze this problem. The decision makers are implemented as Classifier Systems, and their learning process is simulated by Genetic Algorithms. To validate the outcomes we compared the results with the optimal solutions obtained by full enumeration. It turned out that the genetic algorithm indeed was able to generate useful rules that describe how the decision makers involved in new product development should react to the requests they are required to fulfill. (author's abstract) / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

To deal with rapid and ever-changing environment, many scholars argue that the abilities of organizational change have been one of the essential core competencies for organizations. TTW, which has been a state- owned business for more than 60 years, initiated an upgrade program of product quality in September 2003, to improve its competitiveness whilst undergoing privatization. This paper aims to apply complex adaptive system theories to provide a new practical approach for organizational change. To accomplish this, it shall study various processes; including decision, implementation reflection and transform of the program. In the first stage of initiated changes, TTW applied a top-down approach to implement the organizational change following an established blueprint. These exercises included three elements, which are (1) enhanced autonomous quality inspection of first-line operator, (2) More control check-items and higher standards, (3) Promotion and implementation of quality audit system. However, after half-year implementation of the new program, both performances of interior process quality and exterior product evaluation of consumer satisfaction have gained no substantial progress. By observations and interviews with the participants, it was found that there existed a commonly shared rigid mental model amongst organizational members. It encompasses deeply embedded positional authority, behavior of defensive psychology, lack of implicit knowledge and pre-formulated responses. It exhibited the learning and innovative abilities of organizational members, subsequently, which caused the stagnation of quality improvement. The researched organization learned from the reflections derived from the first stage change process, tried to breakthrough the rigid mental model of organizational members, thereafter provoking substantial participation and execution. The targeted field was moved from business office to a factory. At the beginning of second stage change process, the organization applied simple generating rules derived from the complex adaptive system, to initiate a patching change process, which included (1) ice-breaking initiatives, (2) real- time information exchange, (3) time-pace conditioning, and (4) maintaining motivation and orientation. In the second stage change process, there appeared a few minor improving effects which were gradually being imitated and expanded across the whole organization. By the interpretations of the participants, it was found that there existed an evolutionary mental model of organizational members. It unfolded different features, such as: the willingness of experimentation, the generation of new experiences, the shaping of mutual trust by interaction, the delivering of implicit knowledge and expansion and evolution across functional units. By the effects of evolutionary mental model, some unanticipated innovative behaviors were emerging in the organization, which substantively, upgraded the quality performance of the entire organization. Applying the perspective of complex adaptive system, this paper reviews the nature and the dynamics of the whole changing process and provides some theoretical implications. It is argued that innovative behaviors are the emerging process which can not be fulfilled by top-down managerial intention, but rather can be provoked by evolutionary mental model and autonomous self-organization. In addition, some practical implications were proposed that suggested the managers should focus on the changes of the relations of interaction in organizations. To effectively manage the changing process and continuously induce innovative behaviors, managers should (1) shift the commonly shared mental model to focus more on individual mental model and fostering diverse interaction, to help the emergence of new ideas and innovations, (2) shift the existing relations to focus more on real-time interaction, which can promote the expansion and evolution of innovative ideas, (3) shift the control relations to focus more on mutual trust relations, which can generate shared confidence levels and encourage the execution of innovations under uncertain conditions.

Literature on the modeling and simulation of complex adaptive systems (cas) has primarily advanced vertically in different scientific domains with scientists developing a variety of domain-specific approaches and applications. However, while cas researchers are inherently interested in an interdisciplinary comparison of models, to the best of our knowledge, there is currently no single unified framework for facilitating the development, comparison, communication and validation of models across different scientific domains. In this thesis, we propose first steps towards such a unified framework using a combination of agent-based and complex network-based modeling approaches and guidelines formulated in the form of a set of four levels of usage, which allow multidisciplinary researchers to adopt a suitable framework level on the basis of available data types, their research study objectives and expected outcomes, thus allowing them to better plan and conduct their respective research case studies. Firstly, the complex network modeling level of the proposed framework entails the development of appropriate complex network models for the case where interaction data of cas components is available, with the aim of detecting emergent patterns in the cas under study. The exploratory agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework allows for the development of proof-of-concept models for the cas system, primarily for purposes of exploring feasibility of further research. Descriptive agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework allows for the use of a formal step-by-step approach for developing agent-based models coupled with a quantitative complex network and pseudocode-based specification of the model, which will, in turn, facilitate interdisciplinary cas model comparison and knowledge transfer. Finally, the validated agent-based modeling level of the proposed framework is concerned with the building of in-simulation verification and validation of agent-based models using a proposed Virtual Overlay Multiagent System approach for use in a systematic team-oriented approach to developing models. The proposed framework is evaluated and validated using seven detailed case study examples selected from various scientific domains including ecology, social sciences and a range of complex adaptive communication networks. The successful case studies demonstrate the potential of the framework in appealing to multidisciplinary researchers as a methodological approach to the modeling and simulation of cas by facilitating effective communication and knowledge transfer across scientific disciplines without the requirement of extensive learning curves.

This mixed model approach research explored what are the perceived essential components of an ideal organization. The data were collected from 150 leadership development seminars from 2000 to 2006 hosted by a Fortune 500 company with participants from over 239 organizations producing 5396 responses. The qualitative primary data were unitized and statistically analyzed and synthesized to reveal significant categories and their relationships. The statistically significant categories represent the essential components of an ideal organization. The original qualitative responses manifesting the significant categories are presented in alignment with the emerging complex systems leadership perspective. / text

The purpose of this study is to explore, compare, and analyze the process of learning and the importance of adaptation and resilience in a continuously evolving environment amidst natural disasters as seen in two earthquake-prone communities located in southern Peru. The framework of complex adaptive systems offers insight into understanding human limitations to control an environment that is constantly far from equilibrium. Complexity science theory supports the study and the self-organization of communities in the process of coping with a disaster. Reports generated from informal interviews and participatory techniques further support all evidential findings. The co-evolution process given by the participation of diverse agents may include the collaboration and involvement of victims as well as local, state, and national organizations. Results from the co-evolution process may derive from previous experiences, preparedness, education, the development of previous relationships, and the capacity of improvisation. Furthermore, solidarity, self-organization and adaptation of agents in a community may further influence the ability to deal effectively with unexpected adversity. / text

Western herbal medicine (WHM) is a whole system of medicine that is based on beliefs and practices that evolved distinct from conventional Western medicine. Practitioners of WHM use naturally-occurring crude plant materials, such as roots or flowers with little processing for persons with chronic disease. Herbal medicines are formulated and designed for each person's unique symptom variations, energetic profile, cause and supporting mechanisms of the health issue. This approach to herbal medicine is not explicated in the literature and contrasts the use of highly-processed herb products in a one-size-fits-all approach that fails to reflect WHM as a whole complex system. The purpose of this study was to develop a grounded theory explaining the basic social psychological process WHM practitioners use to formulate plant medicines for individuals. Data were collected from a theoretical sample of 17 North American WHM practitioners contributing a total of 39 interviews and analyzed using the constant comparison method. The process of Personalizing Western Herbal Medicine consists of five steps with a decision-making subprocess of five steps. The core concept of Weaving a Tapestry of Right Relationships explains what practitioners do when Personalizing Western Herbal Medicine. Right relationship is emergent coherence and accounts for wholeness as the relationship of the parts and weaves through connecting each step in Personalizing Western Herbal Medicine. Creating Concordance describes right relationship between the person and the herbal medicine. Concordance is achieved when an herbal medicine fits the whole person and there is a personal shift or restoration of dynamic equilibrium.

This thesis discusses the challenges of modern organizations in their efforts of designing relevant project governance systems. To address the challenge the paper proposes using resource-based view on project-based organizations in order to evaluate and identify key governance resources. Given that prevailing rational and standardized models in project-related literature provide organizations with homogeneous resource-base, this paper invites attention to those resources, which have the potential to deliver unique character to the organizations. The thesis first discusses the relevance of exploring projects as governance resources at project-based organizations, next screens the projects through VRIO framework of resource-based theory. Derived intangible resources and organizational resources are further explored at a case study organization. The findings are analysed through complex adaptive systems theory, where intrinsic motivations appear as sources for emerging project governance systems, while principal trust serves as a resource for self-organization of projects and project governance unit.