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An Algorithm to Identify Conflicts Between Norms and Values

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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 and values are part of the organizational culture. While the values support the agent’s autonomy by representing its character and helping to make decisions and execute actions, the norms are used by the system to cope with the autonomy of the agents by regulating their behavior and the execution of actions. One of the main challenges faced by agents at runtime is the conflicts that may arise between the systems norms and their values. The goals of this paper are to point out the conflict cases between norms and values and to propose an algorithm to help the agent to identify those conflict cases.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A value can be promoted or demoted in many levels and the measurement of the intensity of the promotion or demotion is out of the scope of this paper because it is still an open question to Psychology [14].

  2. 2.

    Some values can also be indirectly promoted/demoted by the promotion/demotion of other values [14, 16], but the discussion of the post-effects of the promotion/demotion of values is out of the scope of this paper.

  3. 3.

    The specification presented in this section can be considered as a preliminary extension of the specification of the BDI agent proposed in [9] to include values in the agent reasoning process.

  4. 4.

    The function checkActionsUnification applies the unification between two actions as in [9, 24] and was omitted here due to the lack of space. It can be seen in http://www.ic.uff.br/~kfigueiredo/values/normvalueconflictsidentification.pdf together with the complete specification presented in this work.

  5. 5.

    Some adaptations may be needed, according to the chosen framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Universidade Federal do Mato Grosso (UFMT), Cuiabá, MT, Brazil

    Karen da Silva Figueiredo

  2. Computer Science Department, Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF), Niterói, RJ, Brazil

    Viviane Torres da Silva

Authors
  1. Karen da Silva Figueiredo
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  2. Viviane Torres da Silva
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Correspondence to Karen da Silva Figueiredo .

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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da Silva Figueiredo, K., da Silva, V.T. (2014). An Algorithm to Identify Conflicts Between Norms and Values. 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_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07314-9_14

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