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We Ought To; They Do; Blame the Management!

A Conceptualisation of Group Norms

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Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems IX (COIN 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 8386))

Abstract

Norms are used to represent desirable behaviours that software agents should exhibit in sophisticated multi-agent solutions. Although we now enjoy a body of research on norms, research has, so far, largely ignored a formal treatment of norms aimed at groups of individuals. Depending on the interpretation, group norms may be intended to effect all, each or some members of the group, sometimes requiring coordination among the members of the group to ensure norm-compliance. In this paper, we map out the various groups which might be involved, and use these groups to sketch a taxonomy of group norms. We also propose a formal representation of group norms using simple set expressions, and provide its semantics. To do so, we introduce a simple notion of power and formally represent the various cases of group norms of our taxonomy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The only coordination aspect of submitting paper reviews is that they are all performed before a particular deadline, instead of them being done simultaneously at a same time.

  2. 2.

    We note that we address social power (viz., a relation among individuals of a society, establishing who has authority or control over others [14]), as opposed to institutional power (viz., whereby members of an institution are empowered to perform certain deeds [9, 19]).

  3. 3.

    We refer the interested reader to, e.g. [11].

  4. 4.

    http://www.w3.org/XML/

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Huib Aldewereld & Virginia Dignum

  2. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

    Wamberto Vasconcelos

Authors
  1. Huib Aldewereld
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  2. Virginia Dignum
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  3. Wamberto Vasconcelos
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Huib Aldewereld .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom

    Tina Balke

  2. Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Frank Dignum

  3. Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    M. Birna van Riemsdijk

  4. Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom

    Amit K. Chopra

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Aldewereld, H., Dignum, V., Vasconcelos, W. (2014). We Ought To; They Do; Blame the Management!. In: Balke, T., Dignum, F., van Riemsdijk, M., Chopra, A. (eds) Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems IX. COIN 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8386. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07314-9_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07314-9_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-07313-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-07314-9

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