Abstract
A multi-agent system can be analyzed and specified as an organization consisting of roles and their relations. The performance of an organization depends on many factors among which the type of its organizational structure, i.e., the set of relations holding between its roles. This work focuses on the structure of organizations and addresses the issue of the analysis, evaluation, and comparison of organizational structures which can contribute to develop general methods for the assessment of multi-agent systems’ performance. Specifically, quantitative concepts from graph theory are used to provide numerical analyses of organizational structures. It is argued that these analyzes can be used for evaluating to what extent an organizational structure exhibits some characteristic properties such as robustness, flexibility and efficiency.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Etzioni, A.: Modern Organizations. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (1964)
Friedell, M.F.: Organizations as semilattices. American Sociological Review 32, 46–54 (1967)
Grossi, D., Dignum, F., Dastani, M., Royakkers, L.: Foundations of organizational structures in multiagent systems. In: Proceedings of AAMAS 2005. Fourth International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, July 2005, pp. 690–697. ACM Press, New York (2005)
Harary, F.: Graph theoretic methods in the management sciences. Managemenet Science 5(4), 387–403 (1959)
Harary, F.: Status and contrastatus. Sociometry 22, 23–43 (1959)
Horling, B., Lesser, V.: A Survey of Multi-Agent Organizational Paradigms. Computer Science Technical Report 04-45, University of Massachusetts (May 2004)
Horling, B., Lesser, V.: Using ODML to model and design organizations for multi-agent systems. In: Boissier, O., Dignum, V., Matson, E., Sichman, J., Utrecht (eds.) Proceedings ofthe International Workshop on Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems (OOOP), AAMAS 2005 (July 2005)
Krackhardt, D.: Graph theoretical dimensions of informal organizations. In: Carley, C.M., Prietula, M.J. (eds.) Computational Organization Theory, pp. 89–110. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah (1994)
Malone, T.W.: Modeling coordination in organizations and markets. Management Sciences 33(10), 1317–1332 (1987)
Malone, T.W., Smith, S.A.: Modeling the performance of organizational structures. Operational Research 36(3), 421–436 (1988)
Morgenstern, O.: Prolegomena to a theory of organizations. Manuscript (1951)
Powell, W.W.: Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior 12, 295–336 (1990)
Scerri, P., Xu, Y., Liao, E., Lai, J., Sycara, K.: Scaling teamwork to very large teams. In: AAMAS 2004. Proceedings of the Third International Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, ACM Press, New York (2004)
Schoemaker, M.: Identity in flexible organizations: Experiences. Dutch Organizations Creativity and Innovation Management 12 (December 2003)
Selznick, P.: Foundations of the theory of organization. American Sociological Review 13, 25–35 (1948)
Smith, A.: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Methuen and Co., London (1776)
So, Y., Chon, K.: A performance model for tree-structuresd multiagent organizations in faulty environments. In: Boissier, O., Dignum, V., Matson, E., Sichman, J., Utrecht (eds.) Proceedings ofthe International Workshop on Organizations in Multi-Agent Systems (OOOP), AAMAS 2005 (July 2005)
Stimson, W.: The Robust Organization: Transforming Your Company Using Adaptive Design. Irwin Professional Publishing (1996)
van der Broek, E.L., Jonker, C.M., Sharpanskykh, A., Treur, J., Yolum, P.: Formal modeling and analysis of organizations. In: Boissier, O., Padget, J., Dignum, V., Lindemann, G., Matson, E., Ossowski, S., Sichman, J.S., Vázquez-Salceda, J. (eds.) Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Multi-Agent Systems. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3913, pp. 18–34. Springer, Heidelberg (2006)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Grossi, D., Dignum, F., Dignum, V., Dastani, M., Royakkers, L. (2007). Structural Aspects of the Evaluation of Agent Organizations. In: Noriega, P., et al. Coordination, Organizations, Institutions, and Norms in Agent Systems II. COIN 2006. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4386. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74459-7_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-74459-7_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-74457-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-74459-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)