Organizational design plays a critical role in the development of larger and more complex multi-agent systems (MAS). As systems grow to include hundreds or thousands of agents, those in the field must move from an agent-centric view of coordination and control to an organization-centric one.

The Handbook of Research on Multi-Agent Systems: Semantics and Dynamics of Organizational Models brings together views and approaches from different communities including MAS, computational organizational simulation, social simulation, organizational theory, and cognitive science, to present the intersections of the different topics. Containing chapters by renowned international authors, this book provides a comprehensive volume on the state-of-the-art on formal semantic models and practical applications for dynamic formalisms of agent organizations.

Coverage:

The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to:

Agent-based human team support
Artificial institutions in the event calculus
Autonomous agents adopting organizational rules
Dynamic specifications for norm-governed systems
Flexible and robust agent interactions
Framework for dynamic agent organizations
Interactions between organizational networks
Methodologies and frameworks for agent organizations
Modeling dimensions for agent organizations
Organization modeling and analysis
Organizational Dynamics
Organizational self-design in worth-oriented domains
Personal assistants for human organizations
Petri net based model for team monitoring
Programming language for normative multi-agent systems
Role of organization in agent systems

Reviews & Statements

This book provides an overview of current work in agent organizations, from several perspectives and focusing on different aspects of the organizational spectrum. It is the hope that the work presented here will provoke additional thought, research attention and concern for the concept of organization in and for multi-agent systems.

– Virginia Dignum, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

This work represents the maturation of the last 50 years of research on applying models of human organizations to inform an understanding of artificial organizations.

– Book News Inc. (June 2009)

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Editor/Author Biographies

Virginia Dignum received a PhD in Computer Science from the Utrecht University (the Netherlands). Before joining academia in 2003, she worked in consultancy and system development for more than 12 years. Her current research focuses on agent based models of organizations, in particular in the dynamic aspects of organizations, and the applicability of agent organizations to knowledge management. She participates and leads several national and EU-projects, and has more than 50 published articles. She organized several international workshops, was treasurer of AAMAS 2005 and is vice-chair of the Belgian-Dutch AI Association.

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Editorial Advisory Board

Alexander Artikis, National Centre for Scientific Research “Demokritos”, Greece

Olivier Boissier, ENS Mines Saint-Etienne, France

Rafael Bordini, Durham University, UK

Cristiano Castelfranchi, University of Siena & National Research Council, Italy

Rosaria Conte, National Research Council, Italy

Ulisses Cortés, Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Spain

Mehdi Dastani, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Frank Dignum, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Shaheen Fatima, Loughborough University, UK

Nicoletta Fornara, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Switzerland

Christian Lemaitre, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico

Victor Lesser, University of Massachusetts, USA

Fabiola López y López, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico

Michael Luck, King's College London, UK

Eric Matson, Wright State University, USA

Pablo Noriega, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA), Spain

James Odell, James Odell Associates, USA

Eugénio Oliveira, University of Porto, Portugal

Andrea Omicini, Bologna University, Italy

Sascha Ossowski, University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain

Julian Padget, University of Bath, UK

Anna Perini, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy

Paolo Renna, University of Basilicata, Italy

Antônio Carlos da Rocha Costa, Universidade Católica de Pelotas, Brazil

Juan A. Rodríguez-Aguilar, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA), Spain

Paul Scerri, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Jaime S. Sichman, University of São Paulo, Brazil

Maarten Sierhuis, RIACS/NASA Ames Research Center, USA

Katia Sycara, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Liz Sonenberg, University of Melbourne, Australia

Wamberto Vasconcelos, University of Aberdeen, UK

Javier Vazquez-Salceda, Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), Spain

Mario Verdicchio, University of Bergamo, Italy