EAGER: Co-Evolution of Social Service Delivery Networks and Population Dynamics

EARLY探索性研究补助金（EAGER）为研究人口动态，不断变化的社会需求和大型社会服务提供者网络的其他结构要素之间的联系提供资金。这项研究将审查一些因素，包括组织形式在外地单位数量、所用资源以及所提供服务的质量和数量方面的演变。此外，将从服务科学理论的角度系统地了解社会服务提供系统。 也就是说，承认服务是由提供者和接受者共同生产的，是无形的，易腐的，异质的，难以标准化的许多其他独特的特点，使他们有别于制造过程。该项目将利用复杂的系统建模方法，促进将组织政策纳入分析中。如果成功，这项研究的结果将有助于建立一个社会服务网络如何共同发展和变化的理论，以应对他们所服务的人口的变化。此外，它还将提高对与社会服务系统独特相关的现象的理解，例如人口变化对社区需求，组织政策和系统性能的非线性影响。它还将有助于揭示受文化影响的网络轨迹变化，这些变化是由因果链引发的，如客户表现出的价值观、意图、行动和结果。 因此，这个项目将展示如何服务组织的生态可以与时空关系的范例建模。这项工作的成果将是：i）分布式人类服务网络的动态模型，能够跟踪空间上操作环境的共同进化;以及，ii）人口动态如何影响网络形式和单个单元性能随时间的理论命题。最后，预计这一探索性的模型将使命题的网络动态性能的评估和社会服务的决策支持系统的发展的方法。

This EArly Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award provides funding to study the links between population dynamics, evolving social needs and additional structural elements of a large network of social service providers. The study will examine a number of factors including the evolution of the organizational forms in the number of field units, the resources used and quality and quantity of services provided. Moreover, a systematic understanding of social service delivery systems will be developed from a service science theoretical perspective. That is, acknowledging that services are co-produced by providers and recipients, and are intangible, perishable, heterogeneous, and difficult to standardize among many other unique characteristics that differentiate them from manufacturing processes. This project will make use of a complex systems modeling approach that facilitates incorporating organizational policy in the analysis. If successful, the results of this research will help establish a theory of how social services networks co-evolve and change responding to changes in the population they serve. Moreover, it will improve the understanding of phenomena uniquely associated with social service systems such as the nonlinear effects of population changes on community needs, organizational policy, and on system performance. It will also help uncover culturally influenced variations of trajectories of the network triggered by causal chains such as value perceptions, intentions, actions, and outcomes exhibited by clients. Thus, this project will demonstrate how the ecology of service organizations can be modeled with paradigms of tempo-spatial relations. The products of this work will be: i) a dynamic model of a network of distributed human services able to track the co-evolution of the operating environment over space; and, ii) theoretical propositions of how population dynamics affect network form and individual unit performance over time. Eventually, it is expected that this exploratory model will enable the proposition of methods for the evaluation of network dynamic performance and the development of decision support systems for social services.