Communicative acts constitute organizations as social entities. I build upon the most structured previous analysis of this process, the four flows framework, by introducing a complex systems model of how organization emerges along a continuum, thereby enabling measurement of the growth and decline of partial organizations. I validate my approach using simulated data from two stochastic agent-based models and 30 historical case studies of insurgency. I show that the four flows may be used to assess the historical victor of a conflict, or to track the emergence of an organization from real-time communication network data. My results demonstrate the complex interrelationship of the four flows, and how they relate to social phenomena such as information asymmetry, individual versus group interest, governance, and the development of community structure. I reaffirm the centrality of these flows to the phenomenon of organization, while challenging the minimum requirements for it to begin, by showing that organization spontaneously emerges in a population as a result of markers of affiliation and human cognitive biases. / Doctor of Philosophy / Humans organize collective behavior by communicating. Prior research has shown that all organizations establish the costs and benefits of membership, distinctions from other organizations, enduring protocols, and approaches to short-term coordination. The strength with which organizations define each of these traits emerges on a continuum from a nascent organization to a robust one. My work is the first to place these acts of communication in an engineering model, showing how an organization works as a system to reduce collective uncertainty. I first explore my model in a computer simulation, demonstrating that each of the four processes can be measured. I then quantify the strength of each process in 30 case studies of insurgency, measuring the changing effectiveness of the insurgents and their state opponents at establishing themselves as the governing entity in an area. My technique accurately predicts the outcome of all 30 case studies. Finally, using a second simulation, I demonstrate measures of all four processes in communication records and show that organization may be the result of merely recognizing oneself as part of a group, amid basic patterns in human thinking, rather than evidence of cooperation toward shared objectives.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115024 |
| Date | 11 May 2023 |
| Creators | Schwing, Kyle Michael |
| Contributors | Graduate School, Pitt, Jonathan, Cho, Jin-Hee, Brantly, Aaron F., Ramakrishnan, Narendran, Spitaletta, Jason |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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