Systems are often designed in order to integrate various subsystems. While system designers have a tacit understanding of what integration is, the concept is difficult to formalize. In this paper we propose a measure of integration. In the case of pairwise integration, we suggest a function of...

Collaborators often invest unequal resources towards a common good. Without agreement on sharing that good, collaboration might devolve into parallel, possibly competitive, individual efforts. Reaching agreement requires bargaining. Before bargaining, collaborators independently decide how much...

In order to create Internet standards, people and ideas move across many institutions. By drawing upon the new institutionalism and on organizational ecology, we develop an ecological approach to studying this movement. The approach examines the birth and death of standards bodies and the ideas...

Evolution explains the way the natural world changes over time. It can also explain changes in the artificial world, such as the way ideas replicate, alter, and merge. This analogy has led to a family of related computer procedures called evolutionary algorithms. These algorithms are being used...