Human Organizations and Implementation based on MAS

Organizations represent a powerful way to coordinate complex behavior in human societies.

 

There are two types of organizations: mechanical and organic organizations.

1. mechanical organizations

Tasks are precisely defined, and they are broken down into separately specialized parts. There is a strict hierarchy of authority. Knowledge and reasoning processes are also centralized at the top of the hierarchy. Communications are mainly vertical (between supervisors and subordinates).

 

(1)A simple structure

represents an organization with few departments, where an individual centralizes the capture of decisions.

This organization is very simple: responsibilities are clear, communications are direct, and the capture of decisions and their execution is rapid. However, this type is only recommended for small organizations, as there is little formalization and the manager must handle lots of information.

 

1) A single-person structure consists of only one actor, who does all tasks, reacting to the environment when necessary.

 

2) A simple hierarchy structure, the organization is divided into two levels: the upper level and the lower level. The upper level is composed of one actor, who is in charge of making decisions. The actor also coordinates low level tasks and has enough authority to make changes in the organization behavior, as s/he has complete information about the system. On the other hand, the lower level is formed by actors who carry out basic tasks. These actors have to communicate with each other through the upper level. Thus, system coordination is achieved by means of hierarchical relations and authority.

 

3) Chain of values structure (or supply chain) consists of several actors who are arranged in a chain, who try to reach their goals in different states of a production process. Every participant of the chain adds a new value at every step of the process.

 

Implementation

• A master/slave architecture can be used, where a master can obtain information from agents of the group, create plans, and assign tasks to individual agents in order to assure global coherence.
• A blackboard architecture can also be used, where agents read and write on a general blackboard and a master agent controls what is read and written by the agents.

 

(2)A bureaucracy structure

is mainly characterized by operative, routine tasks with high specialization. There are also many rules and formalized regulations. Therefore, it is composed of diverse departments, with a low level of control (i.e. managers control a small group of persons); therefore many levels of management can be established. Authority is centralized and decision-making follows a chain of command.

 

Advantages:

this structure allows standard activities to be done in a very effective way.

 

Disadvantages:

the high specialization of tasks can create conflicts in units or departments; so managers might be more focused on achieving their own unit goals than the general goals of the organization.

In addition, managers can be excessively concerned with following the rules, and they may not know what to do when faced with new situations. Therefore, this type of organizations has diffculties responding to environmental changes.

Functional structure tasks and departments are grouped based on technical specialization or business functions.

Divisional structure, departments are established by autonomous divisions that contain all functions needed. These divisions can be established by manufacturing products, by types of clients, by geographical areas, etc. This model offers a more flexible and autonomous structure, though it needs duplication of resources.

 

Implementation

• agents with several levels of hierarchy or authority, in which a major standardization and formalization of tasks is needed.
• The Contract-Net protocol can also be used.

 

(3)A matrix structure

combines both functional and divisional structures, so that personnel have two supervisors: the functional department manager and the product manager. Therefore, there are two chains of control.

 

Advantages:

It facilitates coordination between personnel when there are numerous complex and interdependent activities.

It improves communications and extends flexibility.

It also reduces the possibility that members focus on the individual goals of their departments more than on the general organization goals.

Likewise, it facilitates the effective location of specialists due to its functional topology.

 

Disadvantages:

there may be confusion in decision making as there are two chains of command.

Moreover, this structure promotes power struggles and can create tension, which can be diminished by using bureaucratic techniques, such as a higher formalization of rules.

 

Implementation

a cooperative negotiation agent structure in which its functional part is dedicated to the pursuit of the global goals of the company, whereas its divisional part implies distribution of agents through the system.

 

2. organic organizations

Tasks are adjusted and redefined by means of collaborative work in groups. There are fewer levels of authority and control, so both knowledge and task control are distributed. All members must contribute to the common task of the department. Communications are mainly horizontal between members of the same department, or even between different departments. In this way, they can offer quick and flexible answers.

 

(1)A team structure

eliminates departmental barriers and decentralizes the decision making. Teams or groups represent a system with several actors that have a common goal: the accomplishment of the system global task. This task is divided into subtasks, which are assigned to the most qualified members of the group. Moreover, members share all information and they are in constant communication with each other. Coordination among actors is obtained using mutually accepted decisions and plans.

 

Implementation

distributed multi-agent planning for agent coordination. In this case, every agent is provided with a model of the plans of the other agents. The agents communicate with each other to construct and update their individual plans and the models of the others until conflicts are eliminated. This technique has been employed in the Generalized Partial Global Planning framework.

(2)A virtual organization

consists of a company that outsources the main commercial functions that it needs. There are three types of virtual organizations : a simple market, a collective organization, and a general market.

 

Implementation

negotiation techniques :

i) negotiation based on game theory, which consists of an interactive process of offers and counteroffers in which every agent chooses a deal that maximizes the expected utility value; (ii) negotiation based on plans, in which agents plan their activities separately and later coordinate them by means of a separate coordinating agent; and (iii) negotiation inspired by human and technical approximations of artificial intelligence, specially using argumentation in which agents (besides negotiating offers and counterproposals) attach certain arguments to their offers to support them.

 

Figure1 Human Organization features

 

In order to determine the most suitable structure for the system that is being studied, designers have to tackle the following questions:

• how to subdivide tasks into independent, formalized, and standardized subtasks;
• which of them have dependencies;
• how to group tasks and by what means (geographical, functional, product, process, client);
• where control and decisions have to be made;
• what kind of environment will be considered (dynamic, static, opened, closed);
• who members of society have to report their results to;
• which rules and formalized processes are needed etc.

 

参考文献：

[1] E Argente, V Julian, V Botti. Multi-Agent System Development Based on Organizations. Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science, 2006.