Dear Colleagues,

Inter- and multidisciplinarity are essential in studying complex social systems understood as elements and their interactions. It is necessary to remember two fundamental paradoxes. First, there is no commonly accepted set of definitions for the complexity of social systems. Second, any kind of social system can be described and studied with any model of collective behavior drawn from physics, chemistry, control theory, etc. Everything depends on the choice of border conditions concerning the definition of a “social system”. In consequence of these paradoxes, an unlimited number of mathematical models depicting the complexity of the social phenomena can be produced. Very often, such models lack a necessary profound interpretation deriving from social theory. On the opposite side, qualitative ideas of complexity applied in social sciences need more advanced mathematical models.

This situation creates two challenges: a necessary high level of understanding of the social theories by the authors of mathematical models and a deeper understanding of mathematical models by specialists from social sciences. 

Theoretical and empirical papers linking mathematical modeling of collective social phenomena with a deepened level of phenomenological interpretations are welcome. We also invite attempts to develop mathematical models of complexity-related concepts which are treated as qualitative but can and should be extended with mathematical modeling, e.g., the social complexity of Niklas Luhmann. 

The proposed approach is especially important in (among others) the following areas:

• Management and project management;
• Political, economic, and social governance;
• The studies of economic and social inequality (complexity-based models and more profound economic/social/political interpretations);
• Industry 4.0 and Industrial Revolution 4.0, where deepened analyses of complexity and of its consequences are urgently needed at present;
• Global systemic changes, not only The Great Reset.

Prof. Dr. Czeslaw Mesjasz
Guest Editor

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• complexity of social systems
• game theory
• interdisciplinarity
• management
• measurement
• multidisciplinarity
• phenomenology
• observer and complexity
• project management
• operationalization
• social theory
• scaling
• social systems