OOOP 2005

Agent organizations are an emergent area of application within Multi-Agent Systems that pose new demands on traditional MAS models, such as the integration of organizational and individual perspectives and the dynamic adaptation of models to organizational and environmental changes, both of which are impacted by the notion of openness and heterogeneity. As systems grow to include an increasing number of agents, the view of coordination and control has to be expanded to consider both the agent-centric as well as the organization-centric views. Practical applications of agents in organizational modeling are being widely developed. All this contributes to an emerging field of research and work that could be called Organization Oriented Programming. However, formal theories, tools and methodologies are still very much in short supply. Even if an externally designed organizational structure is a necessary coordination device to achieve global social order there is a special tension between such imposed constraints and the agents' autonomous behaviour. This being the case, a special track of the workshop will be focused on the trade-off between social order and agent autonomy, and on other means to achieve social order in MAS other than organizations.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers working on organizational aspects of MAS, on the Engineering of MAS using organizational models and the trade-offs necessary between social order and autonomy.