Böcker av Jean-Pierre (Paris University Briffaut

Although complexity makes up the very fabric of our daily lives and has been more or less addressed in a wide variety of knowledge fields, the approaches developed in the Natural Sciences and the results obtained over the past century have not yet permeated Management Sciences very much. The main features of the phenomena that the Natural Sciences deal with are: non-linear behavior, self-organization and chaos. They are analyzed with the framing of what is called "systems thinking", popularized by the mindset pertaining to cybernetics. All pioneers in systems thinking either had direct or indirect connections with Biology, which is the discipline considered complex par excellence by the public. When applying these concepts to Operations Management Systems and modeling organizations by BDI (Beliefs, Desires, Intentions) agents, the lack of predictability in the conduct of change management that is prone to bifurcations (tipping points) in terms of organizational structures and in forecasting future activities, reveals them to be ingrained in the interplay of complexity and chaos.

Although the theory of operations management has been presented in many textbooks published in the last two decades, the subject of e-enabled operations management is rather short of easily accessible literature. The approach to operations management described in this book is unusual with respect to what is found in standard textbooks.