research-article

Organizational self-design in semi-dynamic environments

Authors:

Keith S. DeckerAuthors Info & Claims

AAMAS '07: Proceedings of the 6th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems

Article No.: 202, Pages 1 - 8

https://doi.org/10.1145/1329125.1329370

Published: 14 May 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Organizations are an important basis for coordination in multiagent systems. However, there is no best way to organize and all ways of organizing are not equally effective. Attempting to optimize an organizational structure depends strongly on environmental features including problem characteristics, available resources, and agent capabilities. If the environment is dynamic, the environmental conditions or the problem task structure may change over time. This precludes the use of static, design-time generated, organizational structures in such systems. On the other hand, for many real environments, the problems are not totally unique either: certain characteristics and conditions change slowly, if at all, and these can have an important effect in creating stable organizational structures.

Organizational-Self Design (OSD) has been proposed as an approach for constructing suitable organizational structures at runtime. We extend the existing OSD approach to include worth-oriented domains, model other resources in addition to only processor resources and build in robustness into the organization. We then evaluate our approach against the contract-net approach and show that our OSD agents perform better, are more efficient, and more flexible to changes in the environment.

References

[1]

K. S. Barber and C. E. Martin. Dynamic reorganization of decision-making groups. In AGENTS '01, pages 513--520, New York, NY, USA, 2001.

Digital Library

[2]

K. M. Carley and L. Gasser. Computational organization theory. In G. Wiess, editor, Multiagent Systems: A Modern Approach to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, pages 299--330, MIT Press, 1999.

Digital Library

[3]

W. Chen and K. S. Decker. The analysis of coordination in an information system application - emergency medical services. In Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS), number 3508, pages 36--51. Springer-Verlag, May 2005.

Digital Library

[4]

D. Corkill and V. Lesser. The use of meta-level control for coordination in a distributed problem solving network. Proceedings of the Eighth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pages 748--756, August 1983.

Digital Library

[5]

K. S. Decker. Environment centered analysis and design of coordination mechanisms. Ph.D. Thesis, Dept. of Comp. Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, May 1995.

Digital Library

[6]

K. S. Decker and J. Li. Coordinating mutually exclusive resources using GPGP. Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 3(2):133--157, 2000.

Digital Library

[7]

C. Dellarocas and M. Klein. An experimental evaluation of domain-independent fault handling services in open multiagent systems. Proceedings of the International Conference on Multiagent Systems (ICMAS-2000), July 2000.

Digital Library

[8]

V. Dignum, F. Dignum, and L. Sonenberg. Towards Dynamic Reorganization of Agent Societies. In Proceedings of CEAS: Workshop on Coordination in Emergent Agent Societies at ECAI, pages 22--27, Valencia, Spain, September 2004.

[9]

B. Horling, B. Benyo, and V. Lesser. Using self-diagnosis to adapt organizational structures. In AGENTS '01, pages 529--536, New York, NY, USA, 2001. ACM Press.

Digital Library

[10]

T. Ishida, L. Gasser, and M. Yokoo. Organization self-design of distributed production systems. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 4(2):123--134, 1992.

Digital Library

[11]

V. R. Lesser et. al. Evolution of the gpgp/tæms domain-independent coordination framework. Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, 9(1--2):87--143, 2004.

Digital Library

[12]

O. Marin, P. Sens, J. Briot, and Z. Guessoum. Towards adaptive fault tolerance for distributed multiagent systems. Proceedings of ERSADS 2001, May 2001.

[13]

O. Shehory, K. Sycara, et. al. Agent cloning: an approach to agent mobility and resource allocation. IEEE Communications Magazine, 36(7):58--67, 1998.

Digital Library

[14]

Y. So and E. Durfee. An organizational self-design model for organizational change. In AAAI-93 Workshop on AI and Theories of Groups and Organizations, pages 8--15, Washington, D.C., July 1993.

[15]

T. Wagner. Coordination decision support assistants (coordinators). Technical Report 04--29, BAA, 2004.

[16]

T. Wagner and V. Lesser. Design-to-criteria scheduling: Real-time agent control. Proc. of AAAI 2000 Spring Symposium on Real-Time Autonomous Systems, 89--96.

Cited By

Amaral CHübner JCranefield S(2023)Generating and choosing organisations for multi-agent systemsAutonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems10.1007/s10458-023-09623-837:2Online publication date: 24-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10458-023-09623-8
Ye DZhang MVasilakos A(2017)A Survey of Self-Organization Mechanisms in Multiagent SystemsIEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems10.1109/TSMC.2015.250435047:3(441-461)Online publication date: Mar-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMC.2015.2504350
Val ERebollo MVasirani MFernández A(2014)Utility-Based Mechanism for Structural Self-Organization in Service-Oriented MASACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems10.1145/26514239:3(1-24)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2651423
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Organizational self-design in semi-dynamic environments
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Distributed artificial intelligence

Recommendations

Analyzing the tradeoffs between breakup and cloning in the context of organizational self-design
AAMAS '09: Proceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 2

Organizational Self-Design (OSD) has been proposed as an approach to constructing suitable organizations at runtime in which the agents are responsible for constructing their own organizational structures. OSD has also been shown to be especially suited ...
How Organizational Resources Affect Strategic Change and Performance in Turbulent Environments: Theory and Evidence

This study examines how historical resource endowments and competencies affect strategic change and its outcomes amid environmental turbulence. Drawing from both behavioral and economics-based literatures, we develop four distinct perspectives regarding ...
The Organizational Design of High-Tech Entrepreneurial Ventures

The majority of the theoretical and empirical work in the field of organizational design has focused on large established companies, disregarding entrepreneurial ventures, although the organization of these firms is of paramount importance to their ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences

AAMAS '07: Proceedings of the 6th international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems

May 2007

1585 pages

ISBN:9788190426275

DOI:10.1145/1329125

Conference Chairs:
Edmund Durfee
University of Michigan
,
Makoto Yokoo
Kyushu University
,
Program Chairs:
Michael Huhns
University of South Carolina
,
Onn Shehory
IBM Haifa Research Lab, Israel

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

IFAAMAS

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 14 May 2007

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

AAMAS07

Sponsor:

AAMAS07: International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Mulitagent Systems

May 14 - 18, 2007

Hawaii, Honolulu

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,155 of 5,036 submissions, 23%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

13
Total Citations
View Citations
239
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)3
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 03 Mar 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Amaral CHübner JCranefield S(2023)Generating and choosing organisations for multi-agent systemsAutonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems10.1007/s10458-023-09623-837:2Online publication date: 24-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10458-023-09623-8
Ye DZhang MVasilakos A(2017)A Survey of Self-Organization Mechanisms in Multiagent SystemsIEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems10.1109/TSMC.2015.250435047:3(441-461)Online publication date: Mar-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSMC.2015.2504350
Val ERebollo MVasirani MFernández A(2014)Utility-Based Mechanism for Structural Self-Organization in Service-Oriented MASACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems10.1145/26514239:3(1-24)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2651423
Kota RGibbins NJennings N(2012)Decentralized approaches for self-adaptation in agent organizationsACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems10.1145/2168260.21682617:1(1-28)Online publication date: 4-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2168260.2168261
Ye DZhang MBai QIto T(2010)Self-organisation in an agent network via multiagent Q-learningProceedings of the 11th international conference on Knowledge management and acquisition for smart systems and services10.5555/1881590.1881593(14-26)Online publication date: 20-Aug-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1881590.1881593
Ye DZhang MBai QIto T(2010)Self-organisation in an Agent Network via Multiagent Q-LearningKnowledge Management and Acquisition for Smart Systems and Services10.1007/978-3-642-15037-1_2(14-26)Online publication date: 2010
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15037-1_2
Ghijsen MJansweijer WWielinga B(2010)Adaptive Hierarchical Multi-agent OrganizationsInteractive Collaborative Information Systems10.1007/978-3-642-11688-9_14(375-400)Online publication date: 2010
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11688-9_14
Kamboj SSierra CCastelfranchi CDecker KSichman J(2009)Analyzing the tradeoffs between breakup and cloning in the context of organizational self-designProceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 210.5555/1558109.1558126(829-836)Online publication date: 10-May-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1558109.1558126
Kota RGibbins NJennings NSierra CCastelfranchi CDecker KSichman J(2009)Self-organising agent organisationsProceedings of The 8th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems - Volume 210.5555/1558109.1558122(797-804)Online publication date: 10-May-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/1558109.1558122
Kota RGibbins NJennings N(2009)Decentralised Structural Adaptation in Agent OrganisationsOrganized Adaption in Multi-Agent Systems10.1007/978-3-642-02377-4_4(54-71)Online publication date: 19-Jun-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-02377-4_4
Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Figures

Tables

Media

View Table of Conten