MULTIPLE AGENT FORMALISMS FOR COORDINATION IN ORGANIZATIONAL PROBLEMS

Abstract

Many organizational problems are ill-structured where the structure of a problem is not apparent at the outset of the problem solving process. Agents responsible for these problems often decompose them into subproblems the solution of which is the responsibility of other agents. These problems are only nearly independent in the sense that temporal and technical dependencies exist between the different subproblems. Since the problems are interdependent, coordinating the activities of the different agents is important for ensuring that the partial solutions discovered by these different agents are not conflicting in terms of global consistency. Usual mechanisms for coordination include communication and negotiation between agents of interrelated problems. In this paper we describe a formalism for coordination in multiple agent ill-structured problems based on four properties of tasks, atomicity, serializability, completeness and soundness. We examine how these properties are essential for handling conflict resolution. We also outline some requirements for control.