Coordination Mechanisms

We characterize Participatory Design (PD) as a maturing area of research and as an evolving practice among design professionals. Although PD has been applied outside of technology design, here we focus on PD in relation to the introduction of computer-based systems at work. We discuss three main issues addressed by PD researchers; the politics of design; the nature of participation; and method, tools and techniques for participation. We also report on the conditions for the transfer of “PD results” to workers, user groups, and design professionals that have characterized PD over time and across geopolitical terrains. The topic of the sustainability of PD within an organizational context is also considered. The article concludes with a discussion of common issues explored within PD and CSCW and frames directions for a continuing dialogue between researchers and practitioners from the two fields. The article draws on a review of PD and CSCW literatures as well as on our own research and practical experiences.

... The great barrier [in communication]…is the language. ... The interview data from the case study suggest that by operating as a barrier and a facilitator in cross-cultural communication, language imposes its own structure on communication patterns, flows and informal networks. ...

In this paper, we review the contributions to date for analyzing the newsvendor problem. Our focus is on examining the specific extensions for analyzing this problem in the context of modeling customer demand, supplier costs, and the buyer risk profile. More specifically, we analyze the impact of market price, marketing effort, and stocking quantity on customer demand; how supplier prices can serve as a coordination mechanism in a supply chain setting; integrating alternative supplier pricing policies within the newsvendor framework; and how the buyer’s risk profile moderates the newsvendor order quantity decision. For each of these areas, we summarize the current literature and develop extensions. Finally, we also propose directions for future research.

Modifications of neuronal circuits allow the brain to adapt and change with experience. This plasticity manifests during development and throughout life, and can be remarkably long lasting. Evidence has linked activity-regulated gene expression to the long-term structural and electrophysiological adaptations that take place during developmental critical periods, learning and memory, and alterations to sensory map representations in the adult. In all these cases, the cellular response to neuronal activity integrates multiple tightly coordinated mechanisms to precisely orchestrate long-lasting, functional and structural changes in brain circuits. Experience-dependent plasticity is triggered when neuronal excitation activates cellular signaling pathways from the synapse to the nucleus that initiate new programs of gene expression. The protein products of activity-regulated genes then work via a diverse array of cellular mechanisms to modify neuronal functional properties. Synaptic stre...

Hospital Patient Scheduling is an inherently distributed problem because of the way real hospitals are organized. As medical procedures have become more complex, and their associated tests and treatments have become inter- related, the current ad hoc patient scheduling solutions have been observed to break down (15). We propose a multi-agent solution using the Generalized Partial Global Planning (GPGP) approach

Much emphasis in multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) research is placed on ensuring that MARL algorithms (eventually) converge to desirable equilibria. As in standard reinforcement learning, convergence generally requires sufficient exploration of strategy space. However, exploration often comes at a price in the form of penalties or foregone opportunities. In multiagent settings, the problem is exacerbated by the need for agents to ``coordinate'' their policies on equilibria. We propose a Bayesian model for optimal exploration in MARL problems that allows these exploration costs to be weighed against their expected benefits using the notion of value of information. Unlike standard RL models, this model requires reasoning about how one's actions will influence the behavior of other agents. We develop tractable approximations to optimal Bayesian exploration, and report on experiments illustrating the benefits of this approach in identical interest games.

A watershed can be considered a multi-agent system (MAS) composed of water users (agents) spatially distributed in a distinct manner within a common defined environment from which they can all access a particular resource. The watershed system is characterized by distributed decision processes at the agent level and a coordination mechanism organizing the interactions among individual decision processes. This paper presents a decentralized optimization method known as constraint-based reasoning, ...