Formal Modeling and Analysis of Organizations

Abstract

Organizations have proven to be a useful paradigm for analyzing and designing Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) [2]. Representation of MAS as an organization consisting of roles and groups can tackle major drawbacks present in traditional multi-agent models; e.g., high complexity and poor predictability of dynamics in a system. Moreover, organizational research has recognized the advantages of agent-based models; e.g., for analysis of structure and dynamics of real organizations [1]. However, formal theories, approaches, and tools for designing such models are rare.In this paper, we propose an approach for formal specification of organizations. In contrast to most social science theories it can capture both structural and dynamic aspects of the organization formally and, subsequently, has four advantages: (1) Formal representation of organization structure (including specifications of actors (or roles), relations between them, and information flows).(2) The means for simulations of different scenarios on the basis of a model and observing their results.(3) Organization analysis by means of verifying static and dynamic properties against either simulated scenarios or (formalized) empirical data, taken from real organizations. (4) Diagnosis of inconsistencies, redundancies, and errors in structure and functioning of real organizations and providing recommendations for their improvement (e.g., with regard to organizational performance indicators).Both the general (or abstracted) structure and the behavior of organizations is specified by a generic (or template) model, which is used for a high level organization analysis. For a more detailed analysis, a deployed model is introduced. Such a model is based on both unfolded generic relations between roles, as defined in the generic model, and on creating new role instances. For each role instance, a set of requirements is identified. These requirements are imposed onto the agents, who will eventually enact these roles. For formalizing structural and dynamic aspects of both a template model and a deployed model, ontologies specified in an order-sorted logic are used.The specification of an organization structure in a template and a deployed model uses the following elements: (1) A role that represents a subset of functionalities, performed by an organization, abstracted from specific agents that fulfill them. In contrast to many other organization models from computational organization theory and artificial intelligence, each role in the proposed model can be composed by several other roles, until the necessary level of detail of aggregation is achieved. A role that is composed of (interacting) subroles, is called a composite role. Each role has an input and an output interface, which facilitate in the interaction (communication) with other roles. (2) An interaction link, which represents an information channel between two roles at the same aggregation level. (3) Frequently ignored in other organization models environment is represented as a special component of the proposed mod...

Automated organization design for multi-agent systems

“…One could alternatively view information as needing to flow between roles rather than goals as in work by van den Broek [38]. However, since in the KB-ORG framework multiple roles may be used to satisfy the same goal, we find it more general to specify how information is to flow between goals and to let the information flow between roles be derived accordingly.…”

“…Similarly, in a large organization the appropriate role for answering phones could be a secretary role while in a small organization the CEO may answer every call. Also, since roles are associated only with leaf goals, we do not have a notion of role composition or role hierarchies as in other work [38,41,42].…”

“…Other multi-agent organization design work has focused on providing frameworks or methodologies aimed at assisting the hand-design of organizations and the adherence of organizational constraints [9,12,24,29,38,41,42], possibly using simulation to assist the process [14]. Still other work views the organization-design problem from a game-theoretic perspective [1].…”

A Middleware for Modeling Organizations and Roles in Jade

“…Regarding the analysis of organizations, in [23] can be found what is called the perspective of computational organization theory and artificial intelligence, in which organizations are basically described at the role, and group, composed of roles, levels. Under this perspective, works such as GAIA [25] (which is a model for designing MAS, more than a framework) and the already cited (with extensions) MOISE [14] can be found, while other models, such as ISLANDER [10], define organizations as electronic institutions, in terms of norms and rules.…”

Structural Aspects of the Evaluation of Agent Organizations

“…Work on these issues varies from surveys comparing organizational paradigms [9], to frameworks for representing and verifying organizational designs [10,20], to studies concerning properties and performance of specific types of organizations [14,18].…”