Our conceptions of organizing, organizations and markets are rapidly evolving.  For example, while decision-making is often conceptualized in terms of hierarchy and expertise in organizations, collective and social choice are increasingly the norm.  Thus these emergent, social dynamics and novel forms of social interaction and organization need to more meaningfully be incorporated into our theories of organizations and markets.  Furthermore, evolving conceptions of human nature (for example, seeming tensions between reciprocity and self-interest) and social interaction also deserve to be more carefully addressed.

A central premise of this special issue is that we can learn much about emerging forms of organization by looking for insights across disciplinary boundaries.  Physicists study certain forms of organization, aggregation and emergent outcomes -- as do biologists, mathematicians, economists, sociologists, political scientists and organizational scholars.  While there naturally are comparative differences as well, we think that novel insights will be developed as we seek interdisciplinary insights.   

Thus the invited scholars and their associated manuscripts will address the following types of (and related) questions: