Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Towards Agent-Based Models of Rumours in Organizations: A Social Practice Theory Approach

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Advances in Social Simulation

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Complexity ((SPCOM))

  • 878 Accesses

Abstract

Rumour is a collective emergent phenomenon with a potential for provoking a crisis. Modelling approaches have been deployed since five decades ago; however, the focus was mostly on epidemic behaviour of the rumours which does not take into account the differences between agents. We use social practice theory to model agent decision-making in organizational rumourmongering. Such an approach provides us with an opportunity to model rumourmongering agents with a layer of cognitive realism and study the impacts of various intervention strategies for prevention and control of rumours in organizations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 229.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 299.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 299.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Mercuur et al. [19] provides a static model of SoPrA based on literature and argued modelling choices. This paper applies this model to the domain and extends it by including competences and affordances and modelling a dynamic component based on [17]. Note that Mercuur et al. [19] is still under review and only available as pre-print at the moment of writing.

  2. 2.

    The context element “Friend” and “Colleague” are special cases; these are rather attributes of context elements (i.e. agents) than context elements themselves. In our model these are to some extent implicitly captured, because the agents who one sees most often (i.e. friends, colleagues) are mostly likely to be habitually associated with an action.

References

  1. Bordia, P., Hobman, E., Jones, E., Gallois, C., Callan, V.J.: Uncertainty during organizational change: types, consequences, and management strategies. J. Bus. Psychol. 18(4), 507–532 (2004)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Bordia, P., Jones, E., Gallois, C., Callan, V.J., Difonzo, N.: Management are aliens! rumors and stress during organizational change. Group Org. Manag. 31(5), 601–621 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Bordia, P., Kiazad, K., Restubog, S.L.D., DiFonzo, N., Stenson, N., Tang, R.L.: Rumor as revenge in the workplace. Group Org. Manag. 39(4), 363–388 (2014)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Buckner, H.T.: A theory of rumor transmission. Public Opin. Q. 29(1), 54–70 (1965)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Crawford, S.E.S., Ostrom, E.: A grammar of institutions. Polit. Sci. 89(3), 582–600 (2007). http://www.jstor.org/stable/2082975

    Google Scholar 

  6. Daley, D.J., Kendall, D.G.: Epidemics and rumours. Nature 204(4963), 1118 (1964)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. DiFonzo, N., Bordia, P., Rosnow, R.L.: Reining in rumours. Organ. Dyn. 2, 47–62 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. DiFonzo, N., Bordia, P.: A tale of two corporations: managing uncertainty during organizational change. Hum. Resour. Manag. 37(3–4), 295–303 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Epstein, J.M.: Agent-based computational models and generative social science. Gener. Soc. Sci. Stud. Agent Based Comput. Model. 4(5), 4–46 (1999)

    MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  10. Gersick, C.J., Hackman, J.R.: Habitual routines in task-performing groups. Organ. Behav. Hum. Decis. Process. 47(1), 65–97 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Goldberg, L.R.: The structure of phenotypic personality traits. Am. Psychol. 48(1), 26–34 (1993)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Hart, B.: The psychology of rumor. Psychiatry Interpersonal Biol. Process. 28, 1–26 (1916)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Kimmel, A.J.: Rumors and Rumor Control: A Manager’s Guide to Understanding and Combatting Rumors. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Knapp, R.H.: A pyschology of rumour. Public Opin. Q. 8(1), 22–37 (1944)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Knopf, T.A.: Beating the rumors: an evaluation of rumor control centers. Policy Anal. 1(4), 599–612 (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Lally, P., Van Jaarsveld, C.H.M., Potts, H.W.W., Wardle, J.: How are habits formed: modelling habit formation in the real world. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 40(6), 998–1009 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Mercuur, R.: Interventions on contextualized decision making: an agent-based simulation study. Ph.D. thesis, Utrecht University (2015). https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/323482

  18. Mercuur, R., Dignum, F., Kashima, Y.: Changing habits using contextualized decision making. In: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol. 528 (2017)

    Google Scholar 

  19. Mercuur, R., Dignum, V., Jonker, C.M.: Modelling agents endowed with social practices: static aspects. ArXiv e-prints, pp. 1–22 (2018). http://arxiv.org/abs/1811.10981

  20. Michelson, G., Mouly, S.: Rumour and gossip in organisations: a conceptual study. Manag. Decis. 38(5), 339–346 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Nekovee, M., Moreno, Y., Bianconi, G., Marsili, M.: Theory of rumour spreading in complex social networks. Phys. A Stat. Mech. Appl. 374(1), 457–470 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Oh, O., Agrawal, M., Rao, H.R.: Community intelligence and social media services: a rumor theoretic analysis of tweets during social crises. MIS Q. 37(2), 407–426 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Prasad, J.: The psychology of rumour: a study relating to the great Indian earthquake of 1934. Br. J. Psychol. Gen. Sect. 26(1), 1–15 (1935)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Schatzki, T.R.: Social Practices. A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1996)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  25. Schwartz, S.H.: An overview of the Schwartz theory of basic values. Online Read. Psychol. Cult. 2, 1–20 (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  26. Turenne, N.: The rumour spectrum. PLoS One 13(1), e0189080 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Vosoughi, S., Roy, D., Aral, S.: The spread of true and false news online. Science 359(6380), 1146–1151 (2018)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Wang, C., Tan, Z.X., Ye, Y., Wang, L., Cheong, K.H., Xie, N.G.: A rumor spreading model based on information entropy. Sci. Rep. 7(1), 9615 (2017)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Wood, W., Neal, D.T.: A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychol. Rev. 114(4), 843–863 (2007)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. World Values Survey Association: World Values Survey. http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp

  31. Zanette, D.H.: Dynamics of rumor propagation on small-world networks. Phys. Rev. E Stat. Phys. Plasmas Fluids Relat. Interdiscip. Topics 65(4), 9 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Contributions and Acknowledgement

Ebrahimi Fard and Mercuur wrote the first draft. Ebrahimi Fard provided the domain knowledge and collected most data, whereas Mercuur provided the meta-model and methodological knowledge. Dignum, Jonker and van der Walle supervised the process and contributed to the draft by providing comments, feedback and rewriting. This research was supported by the Engineering Social Technologies for a Responsible Digital Future project at TU Delft and ETH Zurich.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Delft University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands

    Amir Ebrahimi Fard, Rijk Mercuur, Virginia Dignum, Catholijn M. Jonker & Bartel van de Walle

Authors
  1. Amir Ebrahimi Fard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Rijk Mercuur
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Virginia Dignum
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Catholijn M. Jonker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Bartel van de Walle
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Amir Ebrahimi Fard .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Kista, Sweden

    Harko Verhagen

  2. Norwegian College of Fishery Science, UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

    Melania Borit

  3. Linnaeus University Centre for Data Intensive Sciences and Applications, Växjö, Sweden

    Giangiacomo Bravo

  4. Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Nanda Wijermans

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Fard, A.E., Mercuur, R., Dignum, V., Jonker, C.M., van de Walle, B. (2020). Towards Agent-Based Models of Rumours in Organizations: A Social Practice Theory Approach. In: Verhagen, H., Borit, M., Bravo, G., Wijermans, N. (eds) Advances in Social Simulation. Springer Proceedings in Complexity. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34127-5_13

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation