Market Opportunities, Customer Desires and Purchasing Selectiveness Modelling in Multi-layered Cellular Automata: A Study Case on Organizational Survivability

Abstract

The present work aims to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of organizational competition and survival in a supply chain network market context, while highlighting the potential of multi-layered cellular automata models as frameworks for accommodating increasing levels of complexity. More particularly, the implementation of inter-layer rules associated to k-bit words modelling of market opportunities, customer desires and purchasing selectiveness, and their impact on the dynamics of an evolutionary "ecology" of suppliers, competing organizations, and customers, following a complex adaptive systems approach is described and illustrated through a study case on organizational survivability. The implications of the study results -reflecting the interplay between market environment, competitors' strategic choice, and corresponding ability to succeed, survive crises and proliferate -are then discussed and the main aims of the work ahead highlighted.