Contribution of Socionics to the Scalability of Complex Social Systems: Introduction -- Contribution of Socionics to the Scalability of Complex Social Systems: Introduction -- I Multi-layer Modelling -- From “Clean” Mechanisms to “Dirty” Models: Methodological Perspectives of an Up-Scaling of Actor Constellations -- Sociological Foundation of the Holonic Approach Using Habitus-Field-Theory to Improve Multiagent Systems -- Linking Micro and Macro Description of Scalable Social Systems Using Reference Nets -- II Concepts for Organization and Self-Organization -- Building Scalable Virtual Communities — Infrastructure Requirements and Computational Costs -- Organization: The Central Concept for Qualitative and Quantitative Scalability -- Agents Enacting Social Roles. Balancing Formal Structure and Practical Rationality in MAS Design -- Scalability, Scaling Processes, and the Management of Complexity. A System Theoretical Approach -- III The Emergence of Social Structures -- On the Organisation of Agent Experience: Scaling Up Social Cognition -- Trust and the Economy of Symbolic Goods: A Contribution to the Scalability of Open Multi-agent Systems -- Coordination in Scaling Actor Constellations -- From Conditional Commitments to Generalized Media: On Means of Coordination Between Self-Governed Entities -- IV From an Agent-Centred to a Communication-Centred Perspective -- Scalability and the Social Dynamics of Communication. On Comparing Social Network Analysis and Communication-Oriented Modelling as Models of Communication Networks -- Multiagent Systems Without Agents — Mirror-Holons for the Compilation and Enactment of Communication Structures -- Communication Systems: A Unified Model of Socially Intelligent Systems.

This book includes contributions from an interdisciplinary field of research we call Socionics. Based on a close cooperation between sociologists and researchers from distributed artificial intelligence and multiagent systems, Socionics deals with the exploration of the emergence and dynamics of artificial social systems, agent societies, as well as hybrid man-machine societies. The aim is both to develop intelligent computer technologies by picking up theoretical concepts and methods from sociology and to improve sociological models of societies and organizations by using advanced computer technology. The 15 articles in this state-of-the-art survey combine selected contributions from sociology and informatics on the modeling, construction, and study of complex social systems with special regard to the problem of scaling multiagent systems. The discussion focuses on four specific research areas: multi-layer modeling, organization and self-organization, emergence of social structures, and paths from an agent-centered to a communication-centered perspective in modeling multiagent systems.