Article

On the relationship between roles and power: preliminary report

Author:

Maria FasliAuthors Info & Claims

SAC '06: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Applied computing

Pages 313 - 318

https://doi.org/10.1145/1141277.1141351

Published: 23 April 2006 Publication History

Abstract

This paper discusses a formal analysis of multi-agent systems based on organizational and normative concepts. Social agents (individuals and groups) and multi-agent systems have an underlying structure which is underpinned by roles. Power is legitimized within a social context and it stems from a role. In other words, agents draw their power from the authority positions that they hold in relation to other agents. How roles are intertwined with commitments, obligations, power, rights and authority relations is discussed.

References

[1]

J. Broersen, M. Dastani, J. Hulstijn, and L. van der Torre. Goal generation in the boid architecture. Cognitive Science Quarterly, 11(3--4):428--447, 2002.]]

[2]

C. Castelfranchi. Social power: A point missed in multi-agent DAI and HCI. In Decentralized A.I., pages 49--62, 1990.]]

[3]

C. Castelfranchi. Commitments: From individual intentions to groups and organisations. In Proceedings of the First ICMAS Conference, pages 41--48, 1995.]]

[4]

C. Castelfranchi. Engineering social order. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Engineering Societies in the Agents' World, 2000.]]

Digital Library

[5]

L. Cavedon and L. Sonenberg. On social commitments, roles and preferred goals. In Proceedings of the Third ICMAS Conference, pages 80--87, 1998.]]

Digital Library

[6]

F. Dignum, D. Kinny, and L. Sonenberg. Motivational attitudes of agents: On desires, obligations and norms. In From Theory to Practice in Multi-Agent Systems, Proceedings of the Second International CEEMAS Workshop, pages 83--92, 2002.]]

Digital Library

[7]

V. Dignum, J.-J. C. Meyer, and H. Weigand. Towards an organizational model for agent societies using contracts. In Proceedings of the First AAMAS Conference, pages 694--695, 2002.]]

Digital Library

[8]

B. Dunin-Keplicz and R. Verbrugge. Calibrating collective commitments. In Proceedings of the CEEMAS Conference 2003, pages 73--83, 2003.]]

[9]

R. Fagin, J. Halpern, Y. Moses, and M. Vardi. Reasoning about Knowledge. MIT Press, 1995.]]

Digital Library

[10]

M. Fasli. Heterogeneous BDI agents. Cognitive Systems Research, 4(1):1--22, 2003.]]

Digital Library

[11]

M. Fasli. Social interactions in multi-agent systems: A formal approach. In Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC Intelligent Agent Technology Conference 2003, pages 240--246, 2003.]]

Digital Library

[12]

J. Ferber and O. Gutknecht. A meta-model for the analysis and design of organizations in multi-agent systems. In Proceedings of the Third ICMAS Conference, pages 128--135, 1998.]]

Digital Library

[13]

J. French and B. Raven. The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright, editor, Studies in Social Power, pages 150--167. University of Michigan Press, 1959.]]

[14]

J. Miner. Theories of Organizational Structure and Process. Dreyden Press, 1982.]]

[15]

J. Pfeffer. Power in Organizations. Pittman, 1981.]]

[16]

A. Rao and M. Georgeff. Modeling rational agents within a BDI-architecture. In Proceedings of the Second Int. Conf. on Principles of Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, pages 473--484, 1991.]]

Digital Library

[17]

A. Rao and M. Georgeff. Decision procedures for BDI logics. Journal of Logic and Computation, 8(3):293--343, 1998.]]

[18]

L. Royakkers and F. Dignum. Organisations and collective obligations. In Proceedings of the Database and Expert Systems Applications Conference, pages 302--311, 2000.]]

Digital Library

[19]

L. van der Torre and Y.-H. Tan. Rights, duties and commitments between agents. In Proceedings of the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'99), pages 1239--1244, 1999.]]

Digital Library

[20]

M. Weber. Economy and Society. University of California Press, 1978.]]

[21]

M. Wooldridge, N. Jennings, and D. Kinny. The Gaia methodology for agent-oriented analysis and design. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 3:285--312, 2000.]]

Digital Library

[22]

F. Zambonelli, N. Jennings, and M. Wooldridge. Organisational abstractions for the analysis and design of multi-agent systems. In P. Cinacarini and M. Wooldridge, editors, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, pages 127--141, 2001.]]

Digital Library

[23]

E. Zambrano. Formal models of authority: Introduction and political economy applications. Rationality and Society, 11:115--138, 1999.]]

Cited By

Fasli MHermoso RSbruzzi ESena V(2015)Introducing innovation in social networks: A cost-benefit analysis of entry point selection2015 Third World Conference on Complex Systems (WCCS)10.1109/ICoCS.2015.7483238(1-6)Online publication date: Nov-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICoCS.2015.7483238
Neville BFasli MPitt J(2015)Utilising social recommendation for decision-making in distributed multi-agent systemsExpert Systems with Applications: An International Journal10.1016/j.eswa.2014.10.02942:6(2884-2906)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.eswa.2014.10.029
Hermoso RLopes Cardoso HFasli M(2015)From roles to standardsInformation Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-014-9523-417:4(763-778)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10796-014-9523-4
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

On the relationship between roles and power: preliminary report
1. Computing methodologies
  1. Artificial intelligence
    1. Distributed artificial intelligence
2. Theory of computation
  1. Logic
    1. Modal and temporal logics

Recommendations

On the Interplay of Roles and Power
IAT '05: Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology

In this paper a formal analysis of multi-agent systems based on organizational and normative concepts is presented. In particular, social agents and multi-agent systems have structure which is underpinned by roles. Power is legitimized within a social ...
Attributing mental attitudes to roles: the agent metaphor applied to e-trade organizations
ICEC '04: Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Electronic commerce

In this paper we address the problem of defining roles in organizations like e-trade ones. The methodology we use is to model roles according to the agent metaphor: we attribute to roles mental attitudes, like beliefs, desires and goals, we relate them ...
The Roles of Roles in Agent Communication Languages
IAT '06: Proceedings of the IEEE/WIC/ACM international conference on Intelligent Agent Technology

We consider agents having multiple communication sessions at the same time. We assume that FIPA semantics of agent communication languages can still be used when we attribute mental attitudes for each session, which we call the roles of the agents, and ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SAC '06: Proceedings of the 2006 ACM symposium on Applied computing

April 2006

1967 pages

ISBN:1595931082

DOI:10.1145/1141277

Conference Chair:
Hisham M. Haddad
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia

Copyright © 2006 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

SIGAPP: ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 23 April 2006

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

SAC06

Sponsor:

SIGAPP

SAC06: The 2006 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing

April 23 - 27, 2006

Dijon, France

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,650 of 6,669 submissions, 25%

Upcoming Conference

SAC '25

Sponsor:
sigapp

The 40th ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied Computing

March 31 - April 4, 2025

Catania , Italy

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

4
Total Citations
View Citations
205
Total Downloads

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

Reflects downloads up to 04 Feb 2025

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Fasli MHermoso RSbruzzi ESena V(2015)Introducing innovation in social networks: A cost-benefit analysis of entry point selection2015 Third World Conference on Complex Systems (WCCS)10.1109/ICoCS.2015.7483238(1-6)Online publication date: Nov-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICoCS.2015.7483238
Neville BFasli MPitt J(2015)Utilising social recommendation for decision-making in distributed multi-agent systemsExpert Systems with Applications: An International Journal10.1016/j.eswa.2014.10.02942:6(2884-2906)Online publication date: 15-Apr-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.eswa.2014.10.029
Hermoso RLopes Cardoso HFasli M(2015)From roles to standardsInformation Systems Frontiers10.1007/s10796-014-9523-417:4(763-778)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10796-014-9523-4
Vasconcelos WKollingbaum MNorman T(2009)Normative conflict resolution in multi-agent systemsAutonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems10.1007/s10458-008-9070-919:2(124-152)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10458-008-9070-9

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