Agents as the realisers of organisations

1. Agents as the realisers of organisations Catholijn M. Jonker http://www.nici.ru.nl/~catholj vrijeUniversiteitamsterdam

2. Overview • The need for organisation modelling • Organisation modelling • Dynamics of organisations • Organisational awareness • The human perspective • Modelling language(s) should have … • Conclusions

3. The need for organisation modelling • Open, heterogeneous environments • Humans are part of the organisation • Strength of MAS: different concerns represented by different agents • Legacy systems • Agents versus roles • Agents play different roles over time • Several agents play the same role at the same time • Agents play several roles at the same time • Divide and Conquer: levels of aggregation

4. Organisation Modeling Approach • Structure & levels of aggregation • AGR: Groups, roles, interactions • Instances • (Emergent) behaviour of • Parts of the organisation • The organisation as a whole • Interaction • Allocation of agents to roles • And of course: • Requirements, agent design, simulation • Implementation, validation, verification

5. Arnie Trade Auction Seller Buyer Buyer Bernie Master Buyer Don Boss Porter Charlie Auction House Ernie Agent / Group / Role (Ferber, Gutknecht)

6. Arnie Group 1 Role 1 Role 2 Bernie Role 6 Role 7 Group 3 Ernie Aggregation Levels • Organisation • Groups & inter-group interactions • Roles & inter-role interactions • Agents & allocation to roles

7. Temporal Trace Language • State expressions • belief(φ, pos) • Dynamic expressions • Trace and time stamped state expressions: state(, t, A) |= belief(φ, pos) • Dynamic relations between states:  , t :state(, t, B) |= communication_to(A, φ, pos)  state(, t+1, A) |= belief(φ, pos)

8. organization properties group properties inter-group interaction properties transfer properties role properties allocation properties agent properties Properties at different levels of aggregation

9. Dynamics of organisations • Structural changes • Who monitors? • Who initiates change? • Self-organisation or “God-given”? • Behavioural changes • Roles, groups, interactions, organisation • Emergent behaviour • Agent-role allocations change

10. Organisational awareness • Full awareness: • Every role is aware of (part of) the organisation • Example: team sports • Partial awareness: • Only some roles are aware of the organisation. • Examples: Industry, terrorist organisation • No awareness: • No one needs to be aware of the organisation, but changes occur anyway • Example: Put people in a strange situation and observe!

11. Full Awareness: Navy example Navy: flexibility to take over tasks from others. • Ranks: • commander, lieutenant, … • Operational roles: • OTC, anti submarine warfare commander, high value unit, … • Operation-Strategic groups: • Screen, Scouts, Defenders, … • Operational functional groups: • fleet, task force, task group, … • Operational regions: • zulu zulu

12. No propulsion Total Steam Failure during a mission

13. Simulation & V & V • Executable logic • Past & current imply future • LeadsTo logic • Simulate • Check non-executable properties • Prove inter-level relations between properties

14. LeadsTo if  holds for a time interval with duration g, then after some delay (between e and f)  will hold for a time interval of length h.

15. Visualization

16. The human perspective • Aspects of humans involved • Cognitive capabilities • Concerns wrt to the system under development • Views on the system • Humans as part of the organisation • Humans involved • Organisation designer, • Stakeholders, • Domain experts, • HCI designer, • Role player, • Investor, …

17. Model Warehouse • Content: • Models of different aspects of the system • Structure: Views • of the different humans involved • focussing on different aspects • Presentation of a view: • Presentation of models + orchestration • Appropriate medium (textual, visual, physical, …) • Transformations of: • Models • Views • Presentation • Guard, advice & describe during engineering process

18. Modelling language(s) should have … • Organisational concepts & semantics • (organisation, group, role, key performance indicators, …) • Levels of conceptualisation: • show the essence of the organisation • catch the complexity of the organisation • Agent concepts & semantics • Representation • Scalable • Cognitive appropriate • Views per purpose • Behaviour and change

19. Scalability and Cognition • Model as a means of communication • Stakeholders • Team of developers from different specialities • Requirement engineers, • MAS / Organisation designers, • Domain experts, • HCI designers, • Programmers, … • Investors • Public Relations • Software support

20. Representing Behaviour and Change • Changes in structure • Behaviour in a given structural state • Changes in behaviour: • role behaviour (organisational learning/adaptation) • agent behaviour (learning, damage, death), • agent allocation • group behaviour (organisational learning/adaptation)

21. Conclusions • Organisational modelling • The next level of abstraction from agents • Structure & behaviour • Agents are the realisers of organisations • Capture the dynamics & complexity • Humans inside! • Modelling: cognitive abilities • Views: cognitive abilities • Playing roles in the organisation • Open, hybrid systems • Organisation models are meant to • View the organisation from different viewpoints • Means for communication between those involved • Organisational awareness • Specification languages are to help those using them • Different needs -> different aspects -> different language