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Prologue to Autonomous Cooperation — the Idea of Self-Organisation as its Basic Concepts

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Understanding Autonomous Cooperation and Control in Logistics

Abstract

Autonomous cooperation describes processes of decentralized decisionmaking in heterarchical structures. The implementation of autonomous cooperation aims at a flexible self-organizing system structure that is able to cope with dynamics and complexity while maintaining a stable status (Hülsmann and Windt 2005). The basic idea of the concept of autonomous cooperation derives from concepts of self-organisation, which analyze the emergence of ordered and robust structures in complex systems in general (Paslack 1991). The idea of self-organisation has its historical roots in different academic fields such as Physics, Biology and Chemistry and dates back to at least 500 BC of the pre-Socratic Heraclites and Aristotle who identified self-organized processes in natural phenomena (Paslack and Knost 1990; Paslack 1991). An increasing number of literature written by different scientists from different disciplines concern explicitly with self-organizing systems can be found from the 1970’s, as for example in Cybernetics von Foerster (1960), in Chemistry Prigogine and Glansdorff (1971), in Physics Haken (1973) and in Biology Maturana and Varela (1980).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Management of Sustainable System Development, Institute for Strategic Competence-Management, Faculty of Business Studies and Economics, University of Bremen, Germany

    Michael Hülsmann, Christine Wycisk, Robin Agarwal & Jörn Grapp

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  1. Michael Hülsmann
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  2. Christine Wycisk
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  3. Robin Agarwal
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  4. Jörn Grapp
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty 07: Business Studies and Economics, University of Bremen, Wilhelm-Herbst-Str. 12, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Michael Hülsmann

  2. Bremen Institute of Industrial Technology and Applied Work Science, University of Bremen, Hochschulring 20, 28359, Bremen, Germany

    Katja Windt

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Hülsmann, M., Wycisk, C., Agarwal, R., Grapp, J. (2007). Prologue to Autonomous Cooperation — the Idea of Self-Organisation as its Basic Concepts. In: Hülsmann, M., Windt, K. (eds) Understanding Autonomous Cooperation and Control in Logistics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-47450-0_3

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