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Purpose: The introduction in Italy in July 2021 of the "COVID-19 Green Certification", known as the "Green Pass", was a particularly important moment in the political and social history of the country. While its use for health reasons is debatable both logically and scientifically, its effects should be measured at the general sociological level. The "Green Pass" allowed Italian social life to be shaped according to a social and political profile that can be traced back to a "society of control". This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned issue. Design/methodology/approach: This paper, of a theoretical nature, intends to verify such an interpretation through a critical survey of Gilles Deleuze's well-known Post-scriptum sur les sociétés de contrôle (1990) and relating the theories to it from cybernetic science, sociology of social systems and the continental philosophy, specifically Michel Foucault. After a short introduction on the history of the instrument's introduction, the paper, divided into parts reflecting the set-up of Deleuze's text, examines the systemic social effects of the "Green Pass" with regard to its logic, and concludes with a reflection on the program of the instrument's future developments. Findings: The "Green Pass" put into practice a model of a society of control as anticipated by Deleuze, verified with particular reference to some instances of Luhmann's theory of social systems, and in the perspective of a Foucault's "normalizing society" in the process of definition and affirmation. Social implications: The "Green Pass" has been a controversial tool that has caused forms of social discrimination and exclusion and has seriously questioned the architecture of the rule of law. The conceptual paper tries to reflect on the premises and implications of this instrument. Originality/value: The approach to the problem both in a critical key and according to concepts and theories of the sociology of social systems, cybernetics and continental philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In this paper, the authors aim to clarify the relationship between organization and society. They argue that the proliferation of organization in modernity has not yet been properly understood in light of the absence of organization in premodern times. The authors therefore ask: Why do organizations proliferate? Why do they proliferate in such manifold organizational forms? And how can these heterogeneous forms nevertheless be related to a common problem to which organizations provide a solution? A comparative historical analysis based on the theory of social systems reveals that organizations fill a gap which the decline of morality as an integrative success medium created. Design/methodology/approach: The paper develops a conceptual framework focusing on the theory of media within Luhmann's theory of social systems as a point of departure. The authors discuss the concept of "interpenetration" to assess the relation between morality and organization. They raise several follow-up questions for future empirical research, most prominently pertaining to the relationship between organization and digitalization. Findings: The main finding is that morality can be conceptualized as a specific success medium (alongside religion and symbolically generalized communication media) which used to structure premodern societies by means of social and interhuman interpenetration at once. Modern society instead employs two differentiated forms of interpenetration: Social interpretation through organizations and interhuman interpenetration through love relationships. These centripetal counterforces help to mediate the centrifugal forces unleashed by the full development of modern success media. Modern society critically depends on the proliferation of organizations. Originality/value: This paper examines the relationship between morality and organization not from the perspective of interaction or organization, but from the perspective of society. This approach provides novel insights in that it opens up promising avenues of comparison between organization and other social forms. Understanding the distinctively modern "success story" of organization as a social form makes it possible to ask about corresponding potentials and limitations, but also alternative possibilities. In doing so, the authors depart from most studies of organizations grounded in social systems theory as the authors primarily focus on Luhmann's theory of media (as opposed to the theory of differentiation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Circular Economy is a policy and practice-oriented concept drawing mainly on engineering and natural science. This paper aims to contribute a conceptual development based on social systems theory. Does the Circular Economy have the prospect to become a sustainability-enhancing feedback mechanism potentializing an evolutionary systemic rearrangement of structural couplings, and will it encounter limitations as a general approach for a sustainable development? Design/methodology/approach: By using the Luhmannian theory as method, core concepts are semantics, structure and rearrangement of structural couplings. In acknowledging the social system's operational closure, social-metabolism with nature is discussed. The research is in three stages. First, structural couplings of matter and social systems. Second, structural couplings of organizational networks closing the loop–eventually using digitalization. Third, the Circular Economy encountering multicontextuality. Findings: The paper provides: (1) A four-stage structural coupling enacting metabolism with nature allowing measurement of circularity potentially useable for feedback "irritating" relevant social systems' reflexion. (2) Identification of obstacles encountered in the proliferation due to paradoxes of strategic decisions in organizations, difficulties of structural couplings of organizational networks and the paradox of digitalization. (3) Help by future digitalization but simultaneously new side-effects. (4) The multicontextuality as the limitation for a broad sustainability approach. Originality/value: The paper answers a call for more social science theoretical research on the Circular Economy. It develops core conceptualizations based on social systems theory. Also, advices for future research and practical implementation are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Given the form of functional differentiation of modern society, a far-reaching coordination of functional systems as a dissolution of their heterarchical relationship to each other, as was apparently possible in the social "lockdown" during the corona pandemic, should have been extremely unlikely. The purpose of this study is to explain how this was nevertheless achieved. Design/methodology/approach: From the perspective of systems theory, social action in principle does not present itself as a problem but as a solution to (latent) social problems. In the sociological analysis presented here, it is therefore precisely a matter of uncovering or pointing out those (changed) social structures in which a social "lockdown" appears as a solution. Findings: The paper explains that with the emergence of social media through applications such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, a new force is establishing itself at the level of society as a system. It is one that is characterized by being highly vulnerable to moral communication. A susceptibility to morality manifests, on the one hand, through an individual differentiation of society made possible by social media – for example, in the emerging Chinese social credit system – and, on the other hand, through the specific communicative structures of the social media themselves. It is argued that social media, in the form of a moral authority with a lasting effect on society as a whole, make a significant contribution to realizing the social "lockdown." Originality/value: The originality of the paper results from the fact that the emergence of a new social phenomenon ("lockdown") is explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the philosophical roots of Luhmann's theory in relation to its anti-totalitarian elements. Design/methodology/approach: The paper offers a conceptual discussion of the critical and anti-totalitarian angle in Niklas Luhmann's system theory. Findings: This paper finds that systems theory has a critical potential. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge the anti-totalitarian element of Niklas Luhmann's system theory has not be discussed before the present contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The links between moral communication and legal communication have long been studied in sociology of law. Little has yet been said about moral communication invoking when communication in the legal system is impossible, ineffective or uncertain. The paper fills this gap to demonstrate that systems theory-based sociology of law can effectively recognise the role of moral communication in such situations. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents an empirical study of moral communication in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It focused on situations when SMEs' interactions with function systems, particularly the legal system, result in irremovable legal uncertainty. The data depict strategies of managing such uncertainty and were obtained in a paths-to-justice survey of 7,292 owners and managers of SMEs and 101 in-depth interviews. The findings are interpreted using the author's concept of "uncertainty translation", rooted in Luhmann's systems theory. It suggests that business organisations such as SMEs deal with the ubiquitous uncertainty in their operations by translating it into a convenient type. Findings: The study distinguishes between formative and absorbing moral communication and finds that both types play a role in steering the uncertainty translation mechanism in SMEs. Six scenarios of invoking moral communication are identified in SMEs dealing with legal uncertainty. In such scenarios, moral communication facilitates the translation of business uncertainty "away from law". Under some circumstances, this, in turn, leads to latent systematic results, reflexively affecting the legal system, the economic system and the SMEs. Research limitations/implications: In its core argument, the study is based on qualitative material. While it identifies empirical scenarios of invoking moral communication, it does not report the prevalence of these scenarios due to methodological limitations. Originality/value: The study results pose questions related to the staple theoretical issue in post-Luhmannian social systems theory: functional differentiation. If moral communication–a type of communication not linked to any social system–can produce far-reaching, systematic results that affect function systems, then the functional differentiation thesis should be less pronounced than Luhmann typically stressed. This said, the paper argues that the contradiction between the findings and Luhmannian theory of morality is only apparent and may be reconciled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate mathematically the impossibility of achieving a utopian society. Demonstrate that any attempt to correct deviations from a hypothetical trajectory whose ultimate goal is the utopia, increasingly demands more work, including measures that lead to terror, which may even be absolute, leading to the horrible paradox that in seeking paradise hell is constructed. Design/methodology/approach: Scientific tools that the authors have used are: the theory of the system linkage, alysidal algebra, kinematic theory and vector analysis. Findings: Myths are the substrate of some complex systems of beliefs and utopia is its ultimate goal. The use of the combination of the theory of trajectories, belonging to the alysidal algebra, the theorem of unintended effects and kinematics theory provides an approximation to deviations suffering utopian ideological currents and their corrections. Originality/value: This paper is a continuation of other previous papers developing the theory of complex societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to discuss particular features of the public debate around the COVID-19 pandemic and its mitigation strategies in Croatian media from the beginning of 2020 to mid-September of the same year. Design/methodology/approach: The discussion is theoretically grounded on Luhmann's concept of moral communication combined with the key assumption of critical discourse analysis that language reflects a position of power of social actors. Based on these premises, the analysis of a sample of articles in a chosen online media was conducted to uncover the moral codes in the public debate concerning the corona outbreak and connect them with specific moral discourses of particular social actors. Findings: The findings clearly indicate that the communication about the pandemic is considerably imbued with moralization and that moral coding is profoundly used to generate preferred types of behaviour of citizens and their compliance with the imposed epidemiologic measures. In conclusion, Luhmann's claim of moralization as a contentious form of communication is confirmed as the examined public discussion fosters confrontations and generates disruptions rather than contributing to a productive dialogue among diverse social actors. Originality/value: The novelty of the approach lies in the combination of Luhman's conceiving of moral communication with critical discourse analysis that, taken together, entails a pertinent research tool for analysing relevant attributes of the ongoing vibrant debate on the coronavirus outbreak. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: In a context of critical transition such as the COVID-19 pandemic, moral semantics take a prominent role as a form of self-description of society. However, they are not usually observed, but rather assumed as self-evident and necessarily "good." The purpose of the article is to summarize the theory of morality from the social systems' perspective and illustrate with concrete examples the polemogenous nature of moral communication. Design/methodology/approach: This article presents an analysis of the role of morality in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, from the perspective of Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory. Applying the method of second-order observation, it describes three cases of moral semantics disseminated via mass media and social media, and it examines their connection with the structural situation of subsystems of society during the pandemic crisis (particularly healthcare, politics and science). Findings: Second-order observation of moral communication demonstrates to be fruitful to describe the conditions and consequences in which moralization of communication occurs, particularly in a situation of critical transition around the healthcare crisis. The three examples examined, namely, the hero semantics directed to healthcare workers, the semantics of indiscipline and the controversies around pseudo-sciences and conspiracy theories, show how they are based on social attribution of esteem and disesteem, how they try to answer to troublesome situations and contradictions that seem difficult to cope, and how they are close related to the emergence of conflicts, even when they seem positive oriented and well intentioned. Originality/value: This paper is an attempt to test the usefulness of Luhmann's theory of society to understand the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and particularly the role of moral communication in concrete examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Theoretical generalisation provides the basis for tackling problems of service complexity, fragmentation and disrupted care pathways. Design/methodology/approach: Recent mental health service transformation in Wales, United Kingdom, has been stimulated by a policy programme underpinned by person-centred recovery values. This paper offers analysis informed by the perspectives of Niklas Luhmann and other noted theorists to examine escalating service system complexity related to this transformation. Analysis builds upon the findings of a qualitative study employing thematic discourse analysis of talk of people with mental illness and associated workers. Findings: In total, three themes were constructed in participants' talk: "Competing versions of recovery", "Misaligned service expectations" and "Disrupted care pathways." Recovery may be understood as a form of moral communication and autopoietic meaning-making activity, according to Luhmann's radical constructionist epistemology. This has the potential to generate competing versions of recovery, a key contributor to escalating complexity. Research limitations/implications: Findings could be developed further by continued investigation of the relationship between recovery implementation and service fragmentation. Social implications: A more judicious, balanced policy-implementation may cultivate optimal conditions for recovery pluralism by avoiding polarisation towards either top-down, policy-based recovery implementation or a proliferation of approaches at the grassroots level. Findings have implications for healthcare settings beyond the scope of mental healthcare, given the prevalence of person-centred care internationally. Originality/value: A simplistic view of recovery implementation should be challenged. Recovery should not be considered a "magic bullet" for mental healthcare delivery. Haphazard recovery-implementation may have detrimental effects of escalating complexity, service fragmentation and disrupted care pathways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to deepen the understanding of adaptive governance, which is advocated for as a manner to deal with dramatic changes in society and/or environment. To re-think the possible contributions of organizations and organization theory, to adaptive governance. Design/methodology/approach: Based on social systems theory this study makes a distinction between "governance organizations" and "governance communities." Organizations are conceptualized as the decision machines which organize and (co-)steer governance. Communities are seen as the social environments against which the governance system orients its operations. This study considers the adaptive mechanisms of organizations and reflect on the roles of organizations to enhance adaptive governance in communities and societies. Findings: Diverse types of organizations can link or couple in different ways to communities in their social environment. Such links can enhance the coordinative capacity of the governance system and can also spur innovation to enable adaptation. Yet, linking with communities can also slow down responses to change and complexify the processes of deliberation in governance. Not all adaptive mechanisms available to organizations can be used in communicating with communities or can be institutionalized, but the continuous innovation in the field of organizations can inspire continuous testing of small-scale adaptive mechanisms at higher levels. Society can thus enhance its adaptive capacity by managing the role of organizations. Originality/value: The harnessing of insights in organization theory and systems theory for improving understanding of adaptive governance. The finding that both experiment and coordination at societal level are needed, toward adaptive governance, and that organizations can contribute to both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• We propose a SocialLGN system based on GCN for social recommendation problems. • We design a customized graph fusion component to fuse the user representations. • Empirical experiments verify the effectiveness of the proposed system. Graph Neural Networks have been applied in recommender systems to learn the representation of users and items from a user-item graph. In the state-of-the-art, there are two major challenges in applying Graph Neural Networks to social recommendation: (i) how to accurately learn the representation of users and items from the user-item interaction graph and social graph, and (ii) based on the fact that each user is represented simultaneously by the two graphs, how to integrate the user representations learned from these two graphs. Aiming at addressing these challenges, this paper proposes a new social recommendation system called SocialLGN. In SocialLGN, the representation of each user and item is propagated in the user-item interaction graph with light graph convolutional layers; in the meantime, the user's representation is propagated in the social graph. Based on this, a graph fusion operation is designed to aggregate user representations during propagation. The weighted sum is applied to combine the representations learned by each layer. Comprehensive experiments are conducted on two real-world datasets, and the result shows that the proposed SocialLGN outperforms the SOTA method, especially in handling the cold-start problem. Our PyTorch implemented model is available via https://github.com/leo0481/SocialLGN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Powered by advanced information technology, more and more complex social systems are exhibiting characteristics of complex networks. In consideration of the cost, legal and institutional constraints on the study of social systems in real world, the computational experiment method has emerged as a novel and powerful computational theory and tool for the quantitative analysis of complex social systems. However, how to map the dynamic network features of the real world into artificial society models is an urgent issue confronting the computational experiments method. In this paper, based on the theory of complex networks and complex adaptive systems, we propose a dynamic self-evolving network-based artificial society modeling method to achieve the autonomous evolution of the whole social network. The method abstracts the artificial society into an individual node model and a global network model: the individual model evolves autonomously through individual behavior rules, which continuously changes the topology of the global network model, and then presents the emergent phenomenon of the artificial society system. And then, the validity of the model is demonstrated by using the world trade network as the case study. The experiment results show that the self-evolving network-based artificial society modeling method proposed in this paper provides a new perspective and tool for studying the network evolution characteristics of complex social systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Many nonprofit missions and the goals of socially responsible corporations are often found to refer to similar moral ideals related to improving the quality of human life. To take account of this salient fact, the paper aims to theorize the functional equivalence between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the nonprofit sector. Design/methodology/approach: The argumentative strategy is to draw on the conceptual construct of the complexity-sustainability trade-off to develop a systems-theoretic interpretation of Roger Lohmann's vision of the commons as an embodiment of collective voluntary action. Findings: The emerging conceptual imagery is that of corporations and nonprofits as social systems continually seeking to sustain themselves by processing and codifying their societal environment which includes the commons in which Lohmann took a central interest. The possible functional equivalence of corporations and nonprofits is traced back to their struggling to develop and improve their responsiveness to the respective commons. Originality/value: This argument is shown to cut across a range of issues in the modern nonprofit sector scholarship, while shedding new light on the ongoing debates on CSR and stakeholder theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Link Recommendation (LR) in complex networks has attracted huge interest in the social and computer science communities. Numerous networks, such as recommendation systems and social networks (which facilitate user contact), are probabilistic rather than deterministic due to the uncertainty surrounding the presence of links. Evaluating the various characteristics of such networks has frequently been tricky as the Intra-layer linkage graph requires at least two nodes to be in the same layer. Moreover, many existing LR methods mainly operate well on Single-Layer Graphs (SLGs) compared to Multi-Layer Graphs (MLGs) when nodes traverse multi-layers in a network of Intra-layer linkages. Considering this drawback, this paper proposes a Multi-Layer Stochastic Block Interaction method driven by Logistic Regression (MLSBI-LR) to exploit the bi-directional resources associated with Intra-layer linkages. Its inherent dependence on knowledge-based systems uses multi-criteria recommender systems to accommodate additional criteria and can modify neighborhood-based approaches. A multi-criteria network with relations over the same set of nodes is used since the modified neighbor-based method can exhibit rich dependence between entities and have available experimental data sets in MLGs to recommend links that would efficiently enrich users' experience. The accuracy and robustness of the proposed MLSBI-LR method compared to existing LR methods were extensively investigated using three distinct benchmark data sets and four evaluation metrics. Based on our experimental results across the databases and metrics, the proposed MLSBI-LR method performed significantly better (recording up to 17% increment in accuracy), recommending potential links in MLGs. Consequently, the proposed method may revolutionize link recommendation tasks in social networks by improving users' overall experience. • Multi-Layer Stochastic Block Interaction driven by Logistic Regression Proposed. • Recommendation uses bi-directional resources associated with Intra-layer linkages. • Uncertainty graph and machine learning enhances the Intra-layer linkage graphs. • Structural properties reveal important information about interaction in the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governance of common-pool resources has vital importance for sustainability. However, in the realistic management systems of common-pool resources, the institutions do not necessarily execute the management policies completely, which will induce that the real implementation intensity is uncertain. In this paper, we consider a feedback-evolving game model with the inspection for investigating the management of renewable resource and assume that there exists the implementation uncertainty of inspection. Furthermore, we use the nonlinear model reference adaptive control approach to handle this uncertainty. We accordingly design a protocol, which is an update law of adjusting the institutional inspection intensity. We obtain a sufficient condition under which the update law can drive the actual system to reach the expected outcome. In addition, we provide several numerical examples, which can confirm our theoretical results. Our work presents a novel approach to address the implementation uncertainty in the feedback-evolving games and thus our results can be helpful for effectively managing the common-pool resources in the human social systems. • A powerful approach is presented to address the implementation uncertainty in the feedback-evolving games. • The protocol can drive the feedback-evolving game system with uncertainty to reach the expected outcome. • Our results can be helpful for effectively managing the common-pool resources in the human social systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although cooperative behavior is ubiquitous in biological and social systems, the causes and mechanisms of cooperation are a basic problem in evolutionary theory. The snowdrift game is considered as an effective evolutionary game model to describe cooperative behavior in a competitive situation. Thus, this paper studies the evolutionary dynamics of cooperative behavior in multi-player snowdrift games. This work establishes a stochastic two-strategy multi-player snowdrift game based on the Wright-Fisher (W-F) update process. Next, a specific analytical expression for fixation probabilities of cooperation and defection is considered, and the conditions under which cooperative strategies take root in a population and become an evolutionarily stable strategy are given. Finally, the relationships between the fixation probability of cooperation and each parameter involved in the game are obtained via simulation analysis. A simulation analysis reveals that the fixation probability of cooperation decreases with selection intensity, the number of players playing in multi-player snowdrift games, and population size but increases with the benefit-cost ratio. The present work promotes an understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of cooperative behavior and the theory of multi-player snowdrift games with the W-F update process. • A two-strategy multi-player snowdrift game with a W-F process is established. • The concrete analytic expression of the fixation probability is solved. • The conditions under which a strategy takes root and becomes ESS are given. • The relationships between fixation probability and each parameter are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many real world systems ranging from biological to social systems can be modeled as networks. As network data becomes more ubiquitous, it is important to reduce the large-scale networks into smaller modules or communities. Most of the original research in community detection has focused on static networks while many real world networks such as social and biological networks exhibit varying topology over time. For this reason, over the past twenty years various community detection methods for dynamic networks have been developed in physics, statistics, computer science and signal processing. In this paper, we present an overview of the current state-of-the-art in community detection for dynamic networks and illustrate some of the shortcomings of existing methods. We also outline future challenges and opportunities in this research area. • An overview of existing approaches to community detection in dynamic networks is presented. • Community detection results for both synthetic and real dynamic networks are given. • The results illustrate the utility and shortcomings of current community detection methods. • Challenges and opportunities in community detection for dynamic networks are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]