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Foundations of organizational structures in multiagent systems

Published: 25 July 2005 Publication History

Abstract

We analyze the notion of organizational structure in multiagent systems and explain the precise added value and the effects of such organizational structure on the involved agents. To pursue this aim, contributions from social and organization theory are considered which provide a solid theoretical foundation to this analysis. We argue that organizational structures should be seen along at least three dimensions, instead of just one: power, coordination, and control. In order to systematize the approach, formal tools are used to describe the organizational structure as well as the effect of such structures on the activities in multiagent systems. We specify the properties and the consequences of organizational structures for the actions of the involved agents.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    AAMAS '05: Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems
    July 2005
    1407 pages
    ISBN:1595930930
    DOI:10.1145/1082473
    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]

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    Publication History

    Published: 25 July 2005

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    Author Tags

    1. modal logic
    2. multiagent organizations
    3. social structure

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