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The chapter explores how trading companies relied on global networks to ply their trade and secure the position far from British shores. The companies constituted a very fertile and durable global space for exchange and dissemination of commodities, information and ideas over large distances. To successfully do this, the forming and strengthening of networks with other numerous agents, companies, and English trading companies with knowledge of long distance extra-European trade became increasingly important. Between 1550–1750 new connections were formed to answer the changing political and commercial realities globally and domestically. England developed from a peripheral power in Europe to a country at the centre of a global commercial imperial web. Corporate interests spanned from America and the Caribbean to South-East Asia and from Russia to southern Africa. The early modern corporations were created by networks and would come to facilitate a space globally where new networks were formed and, in time, strengthen the corporations.

"Networks" published on by Oxford University Press.

The study of networks, including computer networks, social networks, and biological networks, has attracted enormous interest in recent years. The rise of the Internet and the wide availability of inexpensive computers have made it possible to gather and analyse network data on an unprecendented scale, and the development of new theoretical tools has allowed us to extract knowledge from networks of many different kinds. The study of networks is broadly interdisciplinary and developments have occurred in many fields, including mathematics, physics, computer and information sciences, biology, and the social science. This text brings together the most important breakthroughts in each of these fields and presents them in a unified fashion, highlighting the strong interconnections between work in different areas

AbstractIn light of the burgeoning literature in whole, goal-directed networks for managing wicked problems in public management, it is timely to examine the theoretical evolution that has both shaped and constrained our understanding of these networks. In this article, we argue that contemporary study of whole networks has been dominated by an internal theoretical lens aimed at understanding how internal characteristics influence network functioning and effectiveness. This perspective assumes networks operate in differentiated environments rather than emphasizing interdependence as part of a broader ecology—networks of networks. In this article, we draw from population ecology to introduce the concept of network domains and offer evidence drawn from a population of 60 health-oriented networks in three counties to illustrate domain level characteristics. Using an inductive mode of theorizing, we leverage insights from these domains to consider population dynamics and pose propositions for advancing a program of study into domain level characteristics that may shape and constrain whole networks and their members.

This deliverable describes the methodological approach for the network and stakeholder selection for setting up an online network of networks for the Forum and Observatory. The names of the stakeholders are on a protected online registry and can only be accessed by project partners with permission. The report examines five main features of RRI networks: the main actors, the theoretical structures, the funding sources, the dissemination structures, and the possibility of expanding RRI beyond the European context. Six main actor groups in RRI networks are distinguished: national governments; regional governments; international governmental organisations; civil society actors; businesses, scientific research projects, and policy researchers. Although RRI has emerged recently as a theoretical approach, the number of definitions of the concept has proliferated quite rapidly – as is shown in the discussion of RRI theories later in this deliverable. In terms of constructing a network, this raises something of a dilemma. At present, the main sources of funding for RRI networks and projects have been regional (i.e. EU) and national government funding bodies with some extra support from independent research bodies and foundations. Some RRI projects have succeeded in obtaining funding from businesses and private sources – obtaining such funding seems vital for the long term sustainability of the Forum and Observatory. Existing dissemination structures for RRI are the funding streams for RRI, in addition to online sources such as blogs and forums, and conferences. It is argued that such structures are potentially effective but need more co-ordination and a focus in an overarching structure to avoid fragmentation. Increasing attention is being paid to the possibility of expanding RRI beyond the European context – for example, through governance structures at the global level in the Progress project. Given that RRI is still an emergent concept and is not clearly defined [1] there is currently room to address a range of different conceptions from both within and beyond the European context – this is something that may need to be taken into account in the design of the forum.

Network Calculus is a theory aiming at computing worst-case bounds on performances in communication networks. The network is usually modelled by a digraph : the servers are located on the nodes and the flows must follow path in the digraph. There are constraints on the trafic curves (how much data have been through a given point since the activation of the network) and on the service curves (how much work each server may provide). To derive bounds on the worst-case performances, as the backlog or the end-to-end delay, these envelopes are combined thanks to tropical algebra operators: min, +, convolution. This thesis focuses on Network Calculus algorithmics, that is how effective is this formalism. This work led us to compare various models in the litterature, and to show expressiveness equivalence between Real-Time Calculus and Network Calculus. Then, we suggested a new (min, +) operator to compute performances bounds in networks with agregated flows and we studied feed-forward networks under blind multiplexing. We showed the difficulty to compute these bounds, but we gave an heuristic, which is polynomial for interesting cases. ; Le Network Calculus est une théorie visant à calculer des bornes pire-cas sur les performances des réseaux de communication. Le réseau est modélisé par un graphe orienté où les noeuds représentent des serveurs, et les flux traversant le réseau doivent suivre les arcs. S'ajoutent à cela des contraintes sur les courbes de trafic (la quantité de données passées par un point depuis la mise en route du réseau) et sur les courbes de service (la quantité de travail fournie par chaque serveur). Pour borner les performances pire-cas, comme la charge en différents points ou les délais de bout en bout, ces enveloppes sont combinées à l'aide d'opérateurs issus notamment des algèbres tropicales : min, +, convolution-(min, +). Cette thèse est centrée sur l'algorithmique du Network Calculus, à savoir comment rendre effectif ce formalisme. Ce travail nous a amené d'abord à comparer les variations présentes dans la littérature sur les modèles utilisés, révélant des équivalences d'expressivité comme entre le Real-Time Calculus et le Network Calculus. Dans un deuxième temps, nous avons proposé un nouvel opérateur (min, +) pour traiter le calcul de performances en présence d'agrégation de flux, et nous avons étudié le cas des réseaux sans dépendances cycliques sur les flux et avec politique de service quelconque. Nous avons montré la difficulté algorithmique d'obtenir précisément les pires cas, mais nous avons aussi fourni une nouvelle heuristique pour les calculer. Elle s'avère de complexité polynomiale dans des cas intéressants.