Towards Agent-based Models of Rumours in Organizations: A Social Practice Theory Approach

Abstract

Rumour is a collective emergent phenomenon with a potential for provoking a crisis. Modelling approaches have been deployed since five decades ago; however, the focus was mostly on epidemic behaviour of the rumours which does not take into account the differences of the agents. We use social practice theory to model agent decision making in organizational rumourmongering. Such an approach provides us with an opportunity to model rumourmongering agents with a layer of cognitive realism and study the impacts of various intervention strategies for prevention and control of rumours in organizations.