Abstract

The complexity paradigm is introduced here to explain one of the elements generating the difficulty in managing any kind of organization and, most of all, governmental ones. In that perspective, agent based simulation can operate as a magnifying glass to help us in discovering causal effects and to improve used practice and routines. A few tools useful in that perspective are here introduced, together with examples of application to: a system of payments amongst banks; an emergency call system; the analysis of social changes and individual poverty effects; the analysis of class dynamics and teaching in a primary school.