Simulation On Evolution Of Cultural Norm Based On Social Dynamics

Cultural norm can guide the opinion and behavior direction of employees, and can draw the employees together. A suitable cultural norm is very important for operation of enterprise; however, cultural norm is not a static variable. The processes of cultural norm formation, evolution and reversion are all the macro emerging process about recognition of the cultural norm. The dissertation proposes a serial of computational model about psychology and behavior and embeds the computational psychological model into agent based system and complex networks based on social dynamics. These models which base on social dynamics can simulate the formation and evolution process of cultural norm objectively.A computational model to simulate compliance psychology is proposed to study evolution process of organizational norm and its stability. Existing models about behavior formation mostly base on conformity and obedience and neglect the compliance psychology. Cognitive inconsistence resulting from compliance that people may deny the norm privately but accept the norm publicly may influence the stability of organizational norm. To explore the influences of compliance on formation and stability of norm, we proposed a simulation model to describe the private attitude, expressed behavior and the interactive mechanism between attitude and expressed behavior. Results from a series of simulation experiments indicate that:the smaller the cognitive inconsistence is, the more stable of the norm is; cognitive inconsistencies of individuals with high uncertainty are more easily to decline and they are more easily to form a stable norm; self-centered individuals are more probable to present higher final cognitive inconsistence and are more probable to lead intra-organizational antagonism; in order to guide formation of some suitable organizational norm successfully after reform, enterprise need to advertise the expected norm step by step and focus more on the scattered advertising.The interactive relationship between organizational institution and cultural norm in the time of self-media is studied. In the time of self-media, people can not only communicate with others face to face which is called off-line interaction, but also can express their opinion through self-media software which is on-line interaction. Information propagation is fast, the identity is anonymous and the people dare to speak most of their opinion without fear in the on-line platform. The parallel interaction mode makes the relationship between institution and cultural norm more complex. The dissertation models the off-line interaction, online interaction and institution respectively. The computational experiments analyze the difference between cultural evolution in traditional interaction and cultural evolution in self-media interaction, the influence of institution execution, behavior preference and population characteristics on interactive evolution of institution and cultural norm. The simulation results demonstrate that polarization and extreme is more likely to happen in the scenario of self-media interaction, and the self-media interaction is even possible to break the existing cultural norm; behavior preference of the population impact the result of institution execution significantly.The joint evolving process of cultural norm and dynamic network structure among employees is studied. The mechanisms about trust and authority are considered in the joint evolving process. Firstly, the dissertation models the mechanism of trust and authority; secondly, the computational models about trust and authority are embedded in the agent based system to simulate the process of dynamic friendship networks and cultural evolving; Lastly, the computational experiments analyze the influence of trust and authority on evolution of cultural norm. And the experiments show that in the scenario of dynamic friendship networks, the consensus level of population behavior is lower than the level in the scenario of static networks, and informal groups are easier to form; The distribution of trust values in organization almost subjects to power law distribution, a small group of individuals hold high trust, and a small group of individuals have high authority in the organization, but it is not sure that the authoritative individuals hold high trust friendship.The effect that public non-conformists in the acquired firms have on the integration and evolution of organizational culture or norms after acquisition events is explored. In the classical relative agreement model, all individuals observing their neighbors’ behavior and updating their own opinion and behavior follow the same rules, owing to homogeneity of the individuals. This dissertation proposes a computational model, the so called heterogeneous relative agreement model, that individuals of each kind update their behavior and opinion based on their own rules after merge and acquisition. The simulation experiments show that the time shortly after acquisition is a key period to guide the integration of culture; The manager has to inculcate the public non-conformists timely once there are several employees expressing their non-conformist behavior publicly; The acquiring firm should take the cultural difference into consideration when it choose target firm.