A logic of agent organizations

Abstract

Organization concepts and models are increasingly being adopted for the design and specification of multi-agent systems. Agent organizations can be seen as mechanisms of social order, created to achieve global (or organizational) objectives by more or less autonomous agents. In order to develop a theory on the relation between organizational structures, organizational objectives and the actions of agents fulfilling roles in the organization a theoretical framework is needed to describe organizational structures and actions of (groups of) agents. Current logical formalisms focus on specific aspects of organizations (e.g. power, delegation, agent actions, or normative issues) but a framework that integrates and relates different aspects is missing. Given the amount of aspects involved and the subsequent complexity of a formalism encompassing them all, it is difficult to realize. In this paper, a first step is taken to solve this problem. We present a generic formal model that enables to specify and relate the main concepts of an organization (including, activity, structure, environment and others) so that organizations can be analyzed at a high level of abstraction. However, for some aspects we use a simplified model in order to avoid the complexity of combining many different types of (modal) operators.

Group Norms for Multi-Agent Organisations

“…In all types of actorship, we assume that the members of the Actor set have the capabilities to act on the target. We are aware that this is a very strong assumption and that the matter of linking capabilities to action is an open research issue which is out of the scope of this article (we refer the interested reader to, for example, Dignum and Dignum [2011]). We interpret the target of the different types of group norms as follows:…”

“…We thus consider agents associated with a set of roles, α, Rl , α ∈ Agents, Rl ⊆ Rl. We define an agent's capabilities-the properties of the states that the agent can bring about based on the roles the agent has adopted and the actions associated with these roles: Next, we formally relate roles via power, as explored in, for instance, Jones and Sergot [1996;López y López 2003;Oren et al 2010] and, more recently (and closer to our approach), in Dignum and Dignum [2011].…”

“…By detecting/flagging loops in the power relation at design time, we are warning designers about such potential loops in delegation at runtime. More sophisticated representations for roles [Dignum and Dignum 2011;Carmo and Pacheco 2001;Pacheco and Carmo 2003] addressing features such as "at most one agent should be in this role" (cardinality of a role) and "whomever takes up this role cannot take up this other role" (compatibility of roles) could avoid certain combinations of roles, thus partitioning the graph of roles (vertices) and power relations (edges) into sub-graphs without loops.…”

Agreeing on Role Adoption in Open Organisations

“…In the literature, there are many approaches to the formalisation of these definitions. 1 Research on the theory of action follows two main schools [9]. The first aims at the explicit representation of action by a specific agent, in terms of dynamic logic or situation calculus; whereas the second is concerned with representing the fact that a certain result has been achieved, such as in the stit theories or in the notion of agency.…”

“…The first aims at the explicit representation of action by a specific agent, in terms of dynamic logic or situation calculus; whereas the second is concerned with representing the fact that a certain result has been achieved, such as in the stit theories or in the notion of agency. Based on the philosophical notion that "can" implies ability and opportunity [7], in [9], we have defined agent capability as the inherent skills an agent is endowed with. This implies that having a capability is a necessary but not sufficient prerequisite for exhibiting behaviour that demonstrates the capability.…”